


Life is Strange AUs

by DevinTowerwood



Series: Life is Strange Prompts [2]
Category: Life Is Strange
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Multi, Other, everyone is safe and gay and happy, made per request, prompts, random fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2018-04-23 11:06:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 34,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4874371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevinTowerwood/pseuds/DevinTowerwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here I drop prompts from Tumblr that I like, as well as my short little fictions to accompany them. They each take place in their own separate universes - some are very close to the canon Life is Strange, and others are vastly different (such as the Everyone is Safe and Happy AU).<br/>Use the chapter index to search for a story you'd like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Amberprice: Hella Fuckin' Gay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe Price cannot believe her eyes at the beautiful girl in this coffee shop, nevermind the amazing note to greet her to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon changes  
> \- This actually is supposed to be a lighthearted piece that fits nowhere into LiS canon  
> \- And Starbucks doesn't have a trademark on frappuccinos.

Chloe could not believe the sign she was reading right now. It just seemed so impossible that anyone could pull something like this without getting fired. Sure, it wasn’t a chain or anything, but still, most people can’t manage a sign just inside the door of a coffee shop that read:  
**Today your Barista is  
** 1\. Hella fucking gay  
2\. Desperately single

**For your drink today I recommend:  
You give me your number.**

There was no way. It could not be her, right? There was a little sketch of a person next to the message, but it was not discernible among the baristas. However, Chloe came here all the time, and when she lifted her eyes, there was a girl in particular she was hoping to see.  
And there, as if by a miracle, she saw her. Several inches shorter than Chloe with long blonde hair and these like, hella full pink lips that stretched into a wide, teeth-slightly-baring smile when she made eye contact with Chloe. She was just setting a drink down for a customer near the other side of the store, and as she quickly made her way to the counter, Chloe gave a sheepish smile, stuffing her hands in her jeans as she shuffled over to the point of sales.

“Hey there, what can I get for you?” God, her smile was brilliant. She was always so nice, and Chloe just took it as her being good at her job. She had never dared to ask before, as she didn’t want to be some shit stain who hit on girls at work, but now she was a little tongue tied as she tried to think of what to say.  
So, she went with something easier. “I’ll … uh. Get a grande salted caramel frappuchino. And, um, with 2% please.” She made herself break eye contact while she fished into her wallet for the necessary cash, but it didn’t take long before she looked back up at Rachel. Rachel was pretty, sure, but Chloe hadn’t exactly had a plan on asking her out before this. Like, she hadn’t really seen her around much because she was a year older at school, but she knew that Rachel was simultaneously much more skater punk and much more Vortex club material than Chloe.  
“Do you want your receipt?”  
“Yeah, thanks.”

Chloe got her change back and sat down at one of the tables scattered around, but she couldn’t stop watching Rachel go about making her drink now, and occasionally the skater barista’s eyes would dart over to the twitchy blue-haired punk, and a bit of a smirk would descend on her face.

“Chloe? Salted caramel frapp?” Rachel’s eyes made a bit of a game of wandering around the shop as if looking for her, even though everyone else in the store already had their drink. As Chloe stood up like a bolt, recognized her eagerness looked strange, and thus shoved her hands in her pockets, Rachel’s eyes locked on her and the smirk returned.

Chloe made her way to the counter. “Here you go, Chloe.” Chloe lifted up her frappucinno and removed the remaining piece of straw paper from the top of it. Rachel seemed to hesitate at the counter for a moment, and so did Chloe.

Chloe opened up her other hand a little, which contained her crumbled, then uncrumbled, then written-upon receipt. “Here, um. I thought you might want this.” Chloe reached out with the receipt, and as Rachel saw the digits scrawled on it, her broad smile broke out again.

“Thank you,” she said, and lifted it delicately from her hand.  
Chloe swallowed nervously.

Then, someone else entered into the shop. Chloe’s head turned, expecting a customer, but instead she saw one of the other baristas from the shop - Greg, one of the skater boys, and a senior. She didn’t think too much of it, but then Rachel broke out giggling.  
Rachel held the receipt aloft. “Hey, Greg - it looks like your sign works out for everyone.”

He looked over, and noticed the proximity of Chloe, already holding her drink, and Rachel, right up against the counter. Then he cracked a smile. “Sweet deal, I guess.”

Chloe looked from him back to Rachel, confused. “Huh?” was all she produced.

Rachel somewhat purposefully did not make eye contact with Chloe for this, gesturing over to Greg. “It’s his sign. He’s the hella fuckin’ gay one.”

Greg raised his fingers to form the symbol of rock on as Chloe’s face rushed towards paralyzed, brick red. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry, I thought,”

Rachel shook her head briefly, and then said quietly, “I’ll text you.”

And Chloe walked out in a daze, embarrassed and excited in the extreme. There was no way, right? There was no way in hell …


	2. Prompt: Dana teaches the girls how to dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this short Wardfield piece, Max is terrible at dancing but doesn't want anyone to know. Everyone is safe and gay and happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon changes:  
> \- Nothing bad really happens ever  
> \- Rachel Amber is alive  
> \- Rachel Amber is a total fuckboi  
> \- Kate is a pastel punk  
> \- Max can rewind just 'cause

“Oh, come on now, Max, really? It’s left arm first!”

Max looked around nervously at the line of girls she stood among, her right arm extended into a fist in front of her while everyone else had their left arm extended, except for Kate, who had immediately shifted into the Nae-nae portion of the dance before Dana clapped to stop everyone.  
Max stared down towards her right arm. It wasn’t her fault she was so used to using it.

“Right …” Max said, and opened up her hand, Dana’s head snapping to the side and Kate’s arm shifting back to having her left arm extended as the rapid pull of time forced them back several seconds.

This time, Max punched out with her left arm just as Dana made the same motion, albeit much more smoothly. Kate’s lips quietly moved to the song, “whip, now watch me nae nae”

This time, they got significantly further into the song before Max made another mistake, but this time Dana didn’t call her out because it wasn’t an embarrassingly early portion of the chorus. They just continued on, Max rapidly shifting to try and fix her dance while Kate lagged slightly behind everyone else, somehow terrible at counting time for dance despite her extensive music practice.

It was really hard to call how this dance battle with the boys was going to go over. For one thing, while Dana, Chloe, Victoria, and Rachel all had the dance down perfectly, only Dana and Rachel didn’t look ridiculous doing it - Chloe was too gangly and Victoria’s arms and hands were disproportionately large for her body, so a lot of the extension motions made her look a little weird.

Dana wore gym clothes and was the image of precision. Chloe wore a tank top and jeans, the whip-punch with her right hand being one of the coolest moments of the song for the sheer value of her well-muscled and beautifully tattoo’d arm. Kate had worn her pajamas for their flexibility, but that ultimately proved unnecessary as her low flexibility and poor attention to highly repetitive rhythm kept her from extending to any significant degree. Rachel had worn a flannel, booty shorts with leggings, topped off with a gold-lettered snapback for the sake of getting into character, which looked like it had been stolen off of Justin. Max just wore her Jane Doe tank and jeans, and her Chuck Taylors squeaked every time she tried to slide into a whip. Victoria was too crisp for her own good, and the way she hit everything perfectly on time left it entirely evident that she had watched tutorials and practiced in her room - although that had been easy enough to hear last night. Still, it was all worth it to see Victoria show up in her only t-shirt, which happened to be a wall of text quote from  _Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s_  “Once More, with Feeling”.

As they continued on through the dance, Max eventually abandoned all use of the rewind to hide her mistakes as she just became too tired to force everyone back through time, never mind the fact that at a certain point she was just learning too slowly to avoid having Dana help her.

When the practice ended, Max trotted on over to Instructor Dance Queen Dana Ward and gave a sigh of exhaustion. “I swear,” she started, “If we lose to Trevor and the clumsy cat crew after that it’s all me and Rachel’s horrible attempts at irony.” She wrapped her arms around Dana, immediately regretting it due to the sticky heat that accompanied the act.

Dana laughed brightly and kissed Max on the forehead, but both were quick to drop the hug to evade the heat. Perhaps the boys had gotten the better deal - they practiced outside while the girls practiced in the gym. This had originally seemed beneficial, but it was just hot in here now. Or, at least, the girls were just hot in here now, and there was no refreshing breeze to mitigate the situation.

“Don’t worry, babe, we’ll kick their asses. None of the boys have the hip action to pull the dance off, except maybe Warren, and he’ll probably make it dorky and weird.” She took a step away and retrieved a water bottle from the ground, finishing off what remained of it after the practice. Max followed her to a trash bin, and her eyes zero’d in as Dana made a three ounce contribution to global warming and the eventual collapse of the human species under its own waste.

She cleared her throat to distract herself from that, lacing her fingers behind her back and swaying a little as she looked up at Dana as she turned around. Dana took a moment to look at her before a grin broke out on her face. “Aww, shit, you’re so cute,” she crooned, and took a step forward to wrap Max in a tight hug again, lifting her up and spinning her around while Max giggled furiously.

“Huh, GAY!” Chloe’s shout came through hands cupped into a megaphone, and as Max and her girlfriend broke apart, they turned to look at the tall, tattoo’d punk. Once the attention was on her, Chloe immediately broke into ‘break your legs’, and Rachel paired with her a second later, positioning herself just close enough in front of Chloe to be suggestive as she broke into her own bop-bop-bop.

In almost perfect unison, Dana and Max’s hands snapped into flipping the punk girlfriends off, but this just seemed to make them gleeful, and their own middle fingers rose while they accentuated their dancing. They all grinned.

“WE’RE GONNA KIIIILLLL THE BOYS THURSDAY NIGHT!” Dana hollered, and most of the girls still in the gym whooped in appreciation.   
With an excellent degree of comedic precision, Kate crossed herself just as the whooping died down, and said loudly, “My lord, forgive me, for murder is a sin, but we will surely lay these punk ass bitches low.”

“Amen, sister!” called Courtney on her way out.


	3. Everyone is Safe and Happy: Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I just really wanted to write this. The dance battle ends, a rock performance occurs, and there's lots of gayness (and some rarepair ships!)

Max could not believe her fucking eyes.

Here she was at the fourth Vortex Club party of the year, maybe ten weeks into school. The characteristic vortex projectors shed warm light in every direction, some steady, and some moving across the water and walls steadily. Unlike normal, there was no VIP section to this party, and the back of the pool was arranged in much more of a traditional dance floor style, despite being entirely too slick to be reasonable. Brooke, despite being a rather talented DJ, had been stuck playing ‘Watch Me’ multiple times, but honestly she didn’t seem terribly bothered, as she was just as cool-headed and intent managing the sound system as she was when manipulating any of her robotics projects.

Brooke, like Max and many of the other girls, was dumbfounded. The vast majority of them just stared as the boys, going second in the dance competition, immediately came out entirely too strong. First of all, the entire dance was begun by a solo Warren, but with each whip, an additional boy came into formation in a sort of triangle, demonstrating a level of coordination that nobody had predicted. Warren’s immediate backups were Nathan and Evan, and each time they switched dance moves, the entire formation switched: for instance, [Greg, the gay skater boy barista](http://meditatemoremedicateless.tumblr.com/post/128882569279/amberprice-hella-fucking-gay) with excellent jeans, led the ‘break your legs’ portion, and even Trevor had his turn in the lead, somehow having mastered the duff with more flair than the exact Dana but with greater precision than the cocky Chloe.  
And what was even more intimidating was the fact that the boys gradually progressed across the floor, even though they backed up during nae naes, eventually standing directly in front of Dana and Rachel as the girl leaders, ending with a big flourish from Warren and Nathan in perfect unison.

It was fucking astounding, and the girls were flabbergasted.  
As Brooke paused the track at the end, led by Taylor, Courtney, and Kate, the girls erupted in applause, and nobody even questioned who had won the stupid dance competition. The boys must have secretly put in hours at an unscheduled time, or else Warren was some kind of wizard, but whatever it was, it was awesome.

Jefferson tapped on the microphone experimentally, smiled in response to his success, and then began, “Well, I hate to suggest, but I think we’ve found our winner for our first demiannual dance off - the boys dorm takes it!” He was barely heard over the applause, but when he was done, the girls moved forward in a horde and collided with the boys, hugging their friends and telling them how good they did.

Taylor was quick to find Warren, and, wrapping her arms around his wiry body, lifted him up in the air with a squeal from her and a grunt from him. “You did so good babe! When did you guys get that down?”   
She kept squeezing him as he got out, “We did it at the same time as you guys! It turns out Nathan took like, three years of ballet, and Greg helped us with choreography. You guys were fucking awweesome, though, like, I could not believe your style and synchronicity, super dope.”

Meanwhile, Rachel was pulling out an immensely long and complicated handshake with her bro Greg, as they had for the past two years made the ultimate gay barista duo at a coffee shop in town and could instantly recognize that they were the two snazziest of the bunch, and if it weren’t for Chloe and her glorious tattoo, they would have easily been the punkest too.   
Speaking of Chloe, she had headlocked Justin in punishment for making them lose, but, being so goofily large, she was probably unnecessarily hurting the stoner that found it hard enough to breathe.

After a minute of this mingling, Jefferson spoke up again, “Well now, I’d like to take this opportunity to invite the other main event tonight before I go: please welcome the Blackwell superstars, the Full Metal Pirates!”

Grinning, the girls made their moves onto the stage.

Chloe, who always eagerly anticipated positive attention and any form of idolization she could achieve, was first on the stage, making no effort to ascend with her bandmates. She sported the simplest outfit of them all, just a white tank top that left her powerful, toned arms in full view, her chin-length, sidecut hair leaving her performance headbanging a little uneven. She was seated at her drum set before anyone, other than Brooke, was on stage.  
Max was up next, still wearing her mauve hoodie despite the heat inside the pool area, sleeves pulled up to her elbows to show off her many characteristic bangles. Her undercut tied her greatly to the drummer, but she otherwise was likely the simplest, face still devoid of makeup and no other significant traits, except perhaps the bangs she’d begun to sport since her involvement in the band.  
Max turned and grasped Kate’s hand, and pulled her onto the stage. Kate stood out greatly from these two in many ways in the band, and was likely the most individual of them all, even if not the most recognized. Her dual buns sat at the top of her neck, pulled entirely from the left and right sides of her zig-zagged part, which indicated the separation between her pastel pink and blue hair, holding the most saturated of the colors like little warning lights. Her white shirt was heavily stained with what looked like the liquid that belonged inside glow sticks, or at the very least a type of paint that glowed under black lights. She and Max split up, Kate lifting her electric violin from its stand while Max approached her bass and made a show of tuning it, although immediately moving it back into its original position because it was just that, a show.

Brooke cut out the lights on the stage as Rachel ascended the steps almost solemnly. Then, Brooke leaned over a little behind Kate, and pinched her butt playfully, producing a little squeal nobody could hear from the little pastel punk. Even if they could hear, though, nobody would pay attention, because Rachel Amber was ascending the stage. The wore nothing different than she typically would, just her plain Abbey Road t-shirt and a flannel - it’s not as if she needed to try hard to impress anybody. Well, more than her two ringed earrings stuck in the cartilage of her left ear above two simple studs, completely overweighting the left side of her face along with more studs in her left brow, while her right leg drew a similar level of attention due to the snaking dragon reaching from her thigh to shin inscribed on it. Everyone sort of just took Rachel as a sort of artistic masterpiece just for showing up.

Her entrance was very simple once she picked up her guitar, and tapped her microphone to make sure it was on. She just said, “Actually, we’re the Scurvy Chimeras now.”

A moment later, Warren confirmed that all of the sound was good to go, and Chloe gave Brooke a nod, and the lights began to come back on as the blunette counted off, “One, two” _stick clap_ ,  _stick clap_ , and they began.

And they were superstars. Although Rachel had the girls screaming and the boys hollering within about three notes, Kate drew most of the attention throughout the set, as, unlike the others, she danced around stage, adding a powerful element of motion that nobody else could quite capture. This was perfectly normal, and the main reason the center of stage was reserved for her despite not (usually) playing a lead instrument. After a brief moment of discussion by Victoria and Dana, two bras flew up onto stage, one nearly hitting Kate and the other landing squarely at Max’s feet; Max just grinned down at Dana as she leaned close to the stage and tossed her a wink as well as she can.  
They all fit their roles pretty well. Chloe was the witty (and hot) one that everyone resented because she was dating the lead singer. Max was the careful, dedicated musician and secondary vocals, whose main source of support came from the group’s number one fan, Dana Ward. Kate was the novelty portion of the act, adding in complex harmonies and dancing about the stage to keep the crowd involved, occasionally breaking into the melody for fast-paced solos that virtually never failed to get everyone yell, clap, or otherwise shower her in appreciation. Rachel was the overly-talented lead singer and lead guitarist, the untouchable face of the group and the only one with the capacity for both crooning and shouting rock styles (plus, the most photogenic, dominating the album cover they used for their crappy mix tape). Warren ran sound and, occasionally, contributed his expertise in stage production. Brooke managed the lights, and had, on multiple occasions, added her abilities on the synthesizer, especially on the aforementioned mix tape.

When all was said and done, Rachel just sat down her guitar, letting the last note reverberate as long as she could while the crowd applauded them. Chloe wormed her way out of her seat and unprofessionally, over-gropingly, wrapped herself around the backside of her girlfriend as she tried to dismount the stage, and Brooke similarly pulled Kate over to the corner of the stage along with her laptop so that they could kiss among a mess of wires and speakers. Max sat at the edge of the stage, handing Dana back her bra, while Victoria leaned against the stage, trying to simultaneously disapprovingly glare at all of the lesbians and pretending she was not willing to do them all at this moment in time. Still, her glare rapidly changed into a thirst stare at Rachel and Chloe as Rachel turned her head upward so that the ubertall punk could lean down and kiss her somewhat crookedly.

“God, you’re just the fucking best,” Dana said, wrapping her arms around Max’s waist at the end of the stage and working her way between her legs to be closer to her overly sweaty (again) girlfriend.  
Max just shook her head, her chin probably rubbing against the top of Dana’s head, “Nah, I’m just the bassist. Nobody fucks the bassist.”  
Dana Ward just rolled her eyes and squeezed Max for a moment before leaving her hands on her waist and pushing back a little to look her in the eye … ish. Max does not really make eye contact but Dana would still gaze at her freckle bespeckled face and say, “Yeah, well, I’m fucking the bassist - and you are seriously the greatest. Come on, get down here - let’s dance.”

Surrounded as she was by all of the gay, it was little wonder that Victoria could not seem to find a member of her own trio, as Taylor had disappeared behind the ever-present corner of the pool with her bae Warren, the sound guy. How was she ever going to get a fan following for her saxophone solos if her accompaniment kept disappearing on her? Honestly, that girl was so unreliable …


	4. Prompt: (Everyone is safe): The High GPA students participate in an inter-school competition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max Caulfield just has too many places to be. Luckily, time travel can be used to be a good friend even in impractical circumstances.

Max always thought that she was good at supporting her friends and showing up when she needed to for things. She attended band practice, took tea time with Kate, came to dance performances for Dana, and ate up Chloe’s spare time when available. But that is precisely why today looked like it was going to be miserable.

This Thursday was dedicated as a totally-not-competitive gathering of schools in the Tillamook County area, most of which were substancially larger than Blackwell. It was an event open to both juniors and seniors, but seeing as Blackwell was a senior-only private school, its entire population tended to pale in comparison to even a single class of the other schools. As such, when competitions or performances were scheduled throughout the fair, it was often assumed that there was enough of the school to go around to do all of these things. As such, students had been asked not to sign up to participate in more than one item of the fair, to avoid last-minute scheduling issues.

Max was smart enough to not sign up for anything, sure that would allow her to attend important items of all of her friends. She was wrong. Somehow, the Robotic and Engineering Submarine project was scheduled at the same time that the Blackwell dancing presentation was going on, and both were dead-center of a two-hour hypnosis presentation that Max had resolved to go to as soon as she heard about it. Chloe and Rachel were on the Robotics competition, with their two teammates Warren and Brooke, who likely got more done than the two lovebirds, especially seeing as Rachel’s involvement was largely due to her desire to pad her transcript with all sorts of fancy extra-curricular events. Dana and Nathan were involved in the dance competition, though, splitting Max between her best friend and her girlfriend from the get-go. Then, to make matters worse, Max had promised to go to the hypnosis show with Taylor, and Victoria and Courtney had agreed to go along as well. While this might make it simple enough to ditch the hypnosis show and try and manage to the dance show and robotics competition, the trio had resolved to volunteer for the show and wanted Max to film the whole affair, which she had foolishly agreed to.

She was in the fair now, and the hypnosis show was about to begin. It was two hours long. In forty-five minutes, both the dance show and the robotics competition would begin. The dance performance would be no more than twenty minutes, and the robotics thing would take half an hour.

The trio was successful in volunteering after about fifteen minutes, but as the presenter got them ready, Max was gripped with nervousness as she struggled to put together a plan. It was tough to sit and giggle at Courtney literally collapsing to the ground to a ‘sleep way down’ command for the fourth time (although, it was pretty funny - if not as good as Victoria’s rather convincing Hillary Clinton impression) when you were split in so many directions.

So, about forty minutes into the presentation, while every person remaining on stage was being given a pop star to sing like for the Star Spangled Banner, Max just got up and left. She had to be there for her best friend and girlfriend, she knew that much. She just packed up the camera and scooted her way out of the crowd of people in those white-plasticy aluminum chairs that schools purchase in bulk.

So, now, go see the robotics thing or the dance competition?  
Which did Max  _actually_  want to see?

“Hey, Max!” Kate had two cones of cotton candy, one pink and one blue (much like her hair), and was making a beeline through the crowd of unfamiliar students to Max. Max looked up from the fair schedule and grinned at her favorite pastel-kawaii violinist. “Where’re you heading now? I’m off to the submarine thingy: wanna’ make it a band thing?”

Now Max’s lips curled into an uncertain expression … but then, a plan occurred to her. She stepped towards Kate so that there was very little space between them, and pulled out her camera. “Hey, Kate? Before I answer that question, let’s take a selfie.”  
Kate rolled her eyes; “You’re taking selfies constantly, yeesh. But you know I’m always ready to show off, c’mon,” she replied, wrapping an arm around Max’s waist while the brunette lifted up her polaroid.

_Flash._

“Okay, good. But, I think I’m going to sit the competition out this time - I’ve got to go see Dana and Nathan dance. But I’ll meet up with you if I can! C’mere,” Max asserted once her photo and camera were stored away, and she pulled Kate into a hug. “I’ll be there super soon, I promise.”

“You better be!”

* * *

While Max walked to the competition, she checked her Facebook to see if the plan had succeeded, and she noticed it was a work in progress. She saw a status from herself on her personal-only wall that stated she had ‘successfully filmed the hypnotist’, but no information on the competitions. Two things to do, then.

The dance was pretty awesome, as expected, but Max had seen hours of the different pieces’ rehearsals, with a personal favorite being a four-dancer performance of a dubstep version of the  _Dexter_  theme song for the sole value of its source, but there were several faster, more hip-hop style pieces, which is where Dana really excelled. Max made sure to snap shots as she could, but it was honestly hard to get good shots, even with motion-capture on her phone, nevermind any attempts with her Polaroid.  
The real awesomeness was always afterwards, though, when Dana came to meet up with Max to go anywhere else she wanted in the fair, and she gave Max that first sweaty hug. Pretty much any time Dana was not slathering herself in costume makeup for one event or another, she was sweating thanks to cheerleading, dancing, sex, volleyball, or whatever. She was opposite of Max’s relative sedentary approach to everything, but there was always something super nice about that horribly warm first hug, because Dana would squeeze Max so tight, as if she were just so happy to see her again.  
“Hey you!” Dana said as she squeezed Max this time.

“Hey sweetie,” Max said when she was back on her own feet. To Dana’s surprise, Max quickly withdrew Victoria’s video camera a moment later.

“What’s this for?” Dana asked, gesturing at it.

Max opened it up and turned the screen portion around, so they could see themselves in it. “Okay, so, you and Chloe are scheduled for the same time, and I really want to attend both of your things. But if I attend Chloe’s, we won’t get this moment here, so I want you to know we had it - plus, this lets me not actually have to watch the gang fiddling with their submarine drone for half an hour. I took a selfie before I came here so …”

Dana looked pretty confused during this whole thing, not sure if she should look at the camera or at Max. But then she reognized what Max was trying to say, and nodded. “Oh! Okay. Well, I’m so happy you’re here, and that we kicked ass just a few minutes ago. I love you so much, Max,” she said, finally resolving to drop her eyes on her little dorky girlfriend, and wrapped her arms around her again.  
Max wrapped her free arm around Dana, but kept an eye on the camera because she wanted to make sure they stayed in frame. She snuggled against her as well as she could. “I love you too, sweet heart. And you really did kick ass. Come here,” she said, leaning back in Dana’s arms a little and leaning up on her toes so she could feel Dana’s too-warm, too-sweaty face in reach, and kissed her sweetly.

When they broke apart, Dana spoke up more excitedly, “Now, come on, put that down - let’s take some pictures for Facebook.”  
Max closed down the camera and pulled out her phone, and Dana as the one with longer limbs started to take snapshots of them with their arms around each other and kissing each other’s cheeks and lips, though that one got photobombed by Nathan.

After a minute or two of that, Dana tapped Max’s shoulder: “Come on, you should get to Chloe.”  
Max nodded, but took a moment to steal another kiss from her little tol girlfriend.  
“Go, you!” Dana commanded, though she giggled a little that Max kept delaying, but finally Max removed her polaroid of her and Kate.

“I’ll see you soon!” Max promised, and Dana nodded, folding her arms, a smile still on her face.  
“Go,” Dana said one more time.

Made looked down at the photograph, and breathed, trying to remember Kate’s arm around her waist.

_Flash._

“Okay, good,” Max said, and began to flap the photo around to get it to cool. “Yeah, totally Kate - let’s go support our bandmates: and make sure that Rachel hasn’t found a way to charm fish through her submarine or something. Or Chloe hasn’t harnessed underwater pyrotechnics.”

Kate giggled at the thought for a moment, and released her grasp on Max. “Come on, it’s right next to the lake - let’s go!” Kate now placed her palm against Max’s, and the tiny duo’s fingers laced together to keep them close amid the crowd, though it hardly looked like a crowd to Max, thanks to the whole border effect that the photo rewinds had.  
“All right, lead the way my marshy guide.” Max honestly would be terrible at directions when she could only see a twenty-foot-radius zone, so this was sort of necessary.  
Kate just kept up a grin. “Here we go!”

After a few seconds, time and sound closed in on Max, and time shot forward.

* * *

“OH MY GOODNESS YESSSS! WAY TO GO, BROOKE!” Kate was jumping up and down, which was entirely unnecessary. A small, waist-high fence kept Max and Kate and maybe ten others away from the Blackwell Robotics team, who were on various terminals set up in a small rectangle, with Brooke now holding her iPad victoriously overhead while Warren and Chloe were whooping wayyyy too excitedly.

Max noticed that her hands were paused mid-clap, so she took it up again quickly. “Way to go, Chloe!” Max could ascertain that 1) Blackwell had just won, but that, out of the audience, 2) only Kate and Ms.  Grant were responding with more than lukewarm enthusiasm because, well, they’d just been sort of milling about watching clumps of teenagers manage underwater drones on various screens for the past half hour, and most people weren’t all that excited.

Discouraged groups of other students peered over at the Blackwell team, but they could not engage in good sportsmanship very much, because second place was still up for grabs, and even a $100 dollar scholarship was desirable for those runner-ups.

Rachel and Chloe took a moment to kiss in their excitement, but Brooke was quick to approach the fence with Warren, both leaning over to hug Kate and Max, respectively.  
“You did awesomely!” Kate praised, well-aware that Brooke had been the one actually guiding the submarine through this event.   
Brooke tried to roll her eyes good-naturedly, but Warren was never one to let people evade praise they deserved, “You totally did, B - don’t knock your drone experience.” He offered up a fist bump, and although she gave a grudging grunt, she returned it, then smiled.  
“Yes, and there we have it - the thrilling conclusion to some thirty hours: 500 dollars towards a Cal Tech tuition, and the driest climax of the Tillamook County school competitions.” Brooke was always quick to point out negatives, but Kate was not one to let that slide, so she just leaned further to get her arms around Brooke’s shoulders.  
“Shuddup,” Kate said, and turned her head a little so she could plant a kiss on her lips.

Finally, Rachel and Chloe met up with the rest. “Awww-huh, rolling in hella cash now,” Chloe gloated as she reached the fence, quick to capitalize on any time she could make the ‘make it rain’ motion with her hands.  
Rachel raised her eyebrows over at Max. “I’d have expected you to be at Dana’s thing right now. If you’re here to take a picture, better get on it - I think I see Juliet approaching.”

Everyone located the journalist several paces away, and Max quickly drew out her camera. Everyone, well-trained to support Max’s selfie obsession, scrunched in together, placing their faces around her with various expressions - Chloe’s traditional grin while flipping the camera off; Rachel’s self-assured smirk that animated her face into perhaps its most beautiful (at least, most mysterious) state; Warren’s silly grin and thumbs-up; Brooke smize combined with the ‘I’m not so sure how I feel about being filmed right now’ look; and Kate’s look of sheer glee at being surrounded by friends. Max’s face was as it always was - calm, straight at the camera, and hard to read, but right now, she couldn’t suppress at least a little bit of a smile.

_Flash._

“Hey, guys! Could you stay like that for a sec - for the school paper, you know.”  
As if Juliet were a stomping toddler surrounded by clustered blackbirds, the gang scattered, moving to pick up their equipment, chat up Ms. Grant, or whatever else might occupy them.  
“Hey!” Juliet whined loudly, prompting a good-natured chuckle from several members of the team.


	5. Prompt: Kate Marsh sticks up to Victoria Chase

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is an alteration of the scene from Episode 2: Out of time, in which Victoria and Taylor team up on Kate in the shower room.

Max closed the curtain of the shower. Perhaps twenty seconds later, just as Kate was finishing up brushing her teeth, she could hear the water burst from the shower head.

Kate could not bring herself to look herself in the eye. Instead, she just leaned against the bathroom sink as she thought about what lie ahead today. Class had felt like a daily humiliation ritual, as people went out of their way to have the volume on their phone just high enough that Kate could hear Victoria’s snide giggling in the video.   
The only moments of peace that Kate seemed to have anymore were alone, in her room, late in the evenings, but that peace was a lonely one. She could no longer bring herself to go onto social media, for where she did not see links and screenshots of her video, she saw the disapproval and rejection of her family and friends. The day after the Vortex Club, Alyssa had stopped speaking to her, before the video even surfaced. Once the video began to circulate, Stella was gone - she couldn’t risk the social downfall that being around Kate would bring. She would still text her, occasionally, telling her things would be all right, but those were lies. Stella was no friend. Kate had no friends.

The shower room door opened with a creak as it was pulled wide, and Taylor, Victoria, and Courtney entered. Kate’s body became tense, and her left hand gripped the edge of the sink, trying to avoid eye contact.  
It did not help. Victoria leaned against the sink next to her, forcing her way right into Kate’s point of view. Taylor moved past her, and Kate knew she was being surrounded. Kate had never been in a fight, but she recognized what this was - it was a formation meant to keep someone from fleeing when they were in pain.

“What’s up, Kate?” The elation of finding Kate seemed evident in Victoria’s voice, but Kate forced her eyes to not look towards the tall blonde. She could sense the smirk nevertheless.  
Kate tried to disengage, “School,” she responded, keeping her head down. Her voice was soft, and even to her it sounded wrong.

Taylor, on her left, snickered, “That’s it?” she asked, and passed focus over to Victoria.  
Victoria’s smirk widened into a proper smile, “That video of you didn’t look like homework.”

For just a brief moment, Kate relented her concentration, and she looked over at that bully. “Victoria, that wasn’t me …” she couldn’t even meet Victoria’s eyes, and instead looked back at the sink. She knew it was her. She had seen the video. She had watched it over and over last night. It was her hair, her clothes, it had to have been her. And everyone knew that.

Taylor threw her head back, as if she were going to laugh, but her response was much finer than that, “Oh my god,” she began, filled with dramatic disbelief, “Right.” The staccato in her voice said what the words didn’t - liar.

Kate did not engage. She wold not engage. She could not win this fight. But Victoria seemed to sense that too, because she leaned in close to Kate as she began to speak, voice like a snake, “Don’t be shy. I think it’s awesome that you set a tongue record on video…”

Kate turned towards the door. She had to escape. She had to. Courtney even stood far enough back now that she could. That was a form of kindness in itself.  
Then Kate’s eyes darted from the door over to Victoria. In this position, she could not ignore the gravity of Victoria’s eyes, and hers met the tall blonde bully’s. She cemented the words in her mind as she stared at Victoria.  
Victoria was not affected, at least not at first, “What is it, Katie? Want to tell everyone what you did so we can find the school books, make it official?”

Cruel. Cruel. Childish and mean. This persecution made no sense. No one else was being held accountable. Not the boys, not Victoria, not Nathan.  
Kate’s eyes became steely. “You’re going to be sorry someday. You’re going to be sorry to look back and realize you were nothing but a bully. You’ll realize that you wanted to hurt me so you could feel safe. But you’ll never be safe from yourself, Victoria. Your meanness will eat at you, and even when everyone is subdued and you can feel powerful, you’ll realize you were nothing but a cruel girl who hurt me because you liked it.  _You like it_.” These last three words issued out of Kate’s mouth like steam. None of the girls were saying anything - Kate was speaking too fast and they didn’t know how to stop the rush.

Kate’s eyes became glassy, and her breath was strangely ragged as she tried to find more words, but all that came were questions, “Why? Why do you like hurting me?”

They were silent, and Kate knew she couldn’t keep the eye contact anymore. She didn’t understand her own feelings, and she definitely didn’t understand the confusion that emerged in Victoria’s eyes. She didn’t want to know. She just walked to the door and left, as Victoria tried to put the pieces of her mask back together for her friends and herself.


	6. Prompt: Victoria ends up on the roof with Kate, not Max

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victoria cannot console Kate with love. Maybe hate will be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon changes:
> 
> \- Max has no powers  
> \- Kate stood up to Victoria earlier this morning

With Reference to [This Fic](http://meditatemoremedicateless.tumblr.com/post/128879881924/kate-marsh-stands-up-to-victoria-chase), an alteration of Tuesday morning.  
Written to [“Kids”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7JthgTMHDU) by MGMT

* * *

 

Victoria had decided to skip out on photography today. The weekend had just ended but she already needed another break, thanks in no small part to the letter she received from a local art studio.  
She needed a smoke. It was one of the only things that could help her control her nerves when she no longer could.

She pushed her way out of the roof door without looking up, digging into her pockets for a lighter. A second later, she was blasted by cold droplets all over her skin, and she flinched back, letting the heavy metal door swing closed behind her.  
She looked up, and found an unexpected figure up here with her. It turned around, all but a silhouette in the dark rain, and stared at her like she stared at it.

Kate Marsh stood at the edge of the roof. Too close to the edge.

“What are you doing here, Victoria?” Kate’s voice was high and tight, her throat constricted. The water and the dark made it impossible to see, but Victoria knew that she was crying, or had been.  
Shock and confusion put Victoria off-guard for a second. “Just for a smoke . . .” her eyes were wide and staring, trying to comprehend what she was seeing. Was it what it looked like? Could it really be? There was no way, right? “What are _you_ doing up here?”

Kate glanced behind her, eyes scanning over something in the courtyard. “I’m . . .” that question really seemed to stick her for a second. Then, she answered, “I’m setting things right.”  
The cold began to seep into Victoria’s skin. She took a step forward, shrouding her face in more confusion than she really felt. “So, like, a dramatic gesture? What are you trying to-” as Victoria approached a little more, she noticed Kate flinch back, and, in the courtyard below, she could see a few people standing on the opposite end, as if a crowd blocked them from approaching any further.

Victoria inhaled and no air entered her lungs. She had lost her ability for euphemism a long time ago. “Are you up here to kill yourself?”

Kate’s eyes dropped from hers, and the pause lasted seconds. “Yeah,” she answered.

Every previous experience with suicide rushed into Victoria’s mind. What words could she say? ~~Why?~~ No, she wasn’t going to ask for justification. ~~Don’t do that?~~ There’s no punishment for defiance when you’re dead, and Kate had every reason to spite her. Victoria knew how to manage suicide ideation, but here they were, at the literal edge. It wouldn’t be enough. They couldn’t just go take pictures like she and Taylor would do.

_This is my fault._

“Kate.” She needed more than that. “I don’t know what to say to you. But I don’t want you to die, and those people down there don’t want you to, either.”

Kate made a sound that may have been laughter if her throat weren’t so fucked up - instead, it just sounded like choking. “Are you . . . are you serious? You don’t want me to die, you just want to hurt me? Just take my friends away, let everyone see what bad person I really am? Do you get off on this so much you need me alive?”

Knives in Victoria’s gut. Not because they were harsh, but because they were true, and they both knew them. Drunk though she may have been, Victoria wanted everyone to know that Kate was bad. That she was dirty. She wanted it then. She wanted it now, an out in case Kate really jumped. _She was bad, not me._

_This is my fault._

“Look, I-” Victoria breathed, feeling her defenses raising, but trying not to fight back. No, she had hurt Kate, put her in a cage, but she didn’t need to kill her. “I did, okay? I wanted to hurt you because I could. I wanted to take away everything that you had.”

Kate’s chest swelled up in a deep breath. Her face contorted like a weight lifter pushing through the pain of their final reps. “Why? Do you really hate me that much?”

Victoria wanted to say no. She wanted to point to some excuse, to some great other reason she had, some personal defect, something irreconcilable between them. But all of her fury over Mr. Jefferson, all of her disgust about Kate’s leadership in the abstinence league, all of her moral superiority, and most of all her _humility_. She could feel what it added up to. She wasn’t blind.  
“Yeah. I do.” She swallowed, and she took another step forward. More of the crowd below became visible. “I hate that you have what I want. I hate that you don’t want what I have. I see what you get just for _being,_ like you’re not even trying, and I want to rip it from you. You don’t do that. And I _hate_ it.”

Victoria thought that she would fight back. She wanted Kate to fight back. But Kate never responded the way she thought she would. Instead, her shoulders sagged, and she took a step back towards the edge. Victoria flinched, but she didn’t lunge forward yet.

“Fine, Victoria. This is what you want. To punish me for something I didn’t even do. Fine.” Flat. Resolved. _No, no, no._

Victoria shook her head, but she saw Kate turn her head again, this time to look at the ground, not the crowd.

Victoria’s voice was suddenly a scream, “NO! THAT’S NOT WHAT I WANT!” Her skin boiled in the cold as she took another step forward. They were just a few paces away now, but fear split Victoria’s skin all over, flaying her, leaving her suddenly bare.

It was enough, at least temporarily, to make Kate look back at her. She was so close. Just one step.  
“Then what do you _want_ from me?”

Victoria pressed her palm to her chest, the scream dying down to a yell. “I want you to hate me. Hate me! Fight me! I hurt you. That’s _my_ fault.” Victoria pounded her chest as she claimed the blame.

Kate’s face released the spite, the resolve. It was like it was sagging under a great weight suddenly. “But I did this. I don’t remember it, but that was me. My family can see that. My church can see that. All of them down there? They know what I am. Hating you would only make me evil.”

Victoria did not understand the fury that rose up inside of her: “Fuck them then! And me! No one is worth this. This whole town is not worth dying for.”  
Now it was Victoria’s turn for her voice to turn shrill as her throat closed up. Goddamn it, she hated this about her anger when it came freely, how it brought her to tears. She needed the cold anger, not this.

It took Victoria a while to get to talking again, but Kate just stood there, watching her quietly. She almost seemed to forget her purpose for being up here, if only for a second.  
Victoria’s voice was quiet when it returned, “You say you don’t remember. That it wasn’t you. What happened? Why were you like that? You barely drank.”

“I don’t . . .” Kate shook her head, “I barely remember the party. I drank a little. Like, a cup? I don’t even remember if I finished it. I kissed some people and then -” Kate suddenly cut off, and Victoria could see the gears moving in her head. She was controlling what she was saying, but she was too genuine of a person to do it without being obvious. “I think Nathan might have taken me to the ER? I don’t really remember anything, not clearly.”

Victoria had seen Nathan pull Kate out of the frightening swarm of footballers she’d been making out with at the party. After that, though, he had left the party, and she hadn’t seen him the rest of the night. Had she seen Kate after that? No . . . but Nathan definitely left first.

“So, wait. One drink? Maybe? You were the most trashed person there - I thought you were h-” Victoria’s eyes fixated on Kate’s while images of the party, although hazy for her, flashed by. Replay them. Did they all fit?   
They did. “Shit. Fuck. You _were_ high. Someone fucking dosed your drink.”

Kate seemed paralyzed there at the edge for several seconds. Then, she nodded slowly. “Max thinks so. She wants me to go to the police but I . . .” and finally, Kate began to cry - she couldn’t take the weight anymore. “I can’t. I can’t do this. This is a nightmare, and it plays over and over again and I can’t get out. The police don’t help people like me. There is no out for me.”

The gears were turning again. Kate was looking for her way out. Victoria needed her answer, and she needed it now.

She took another step forward, and they were close now. Almost arm’s length. Almost. “Yes there is. The right one. We make them pay. You, me, Max - she clearly cares about you - fuck, everyone down there. We’ll find out who did this and we’ll _crucify_ them. It won’t put things right, I know that, but people will have the right person to blame. That’s all they want when they see something horrible. Nobody will blame you when they know what happened.”

Suddenly, the metal door to the roof pushed open loudly. Victoria pivoted to take a look behind her, and found Max Caulfield standing there, out of breath, one hand holding her sides from sprinting. Her face that never seemed to emote was carved with fear, completely different than anything Victoria had ever seen from her.  
“Kate,” she said, and then, “Victoria?”

Victoria turned to look back at Kate as she called out, “Max.”

Victoria knew she could never talk Kate down. But she hoped this meant that she had kept her alive long enough. “Look, Kate,” she began, “I’m not the right person to be up here. I’m not good. I can’t show you the things you have to live for. But I hope you hate me. I hope you hate everyone who hurt you, and that it keeps you alive. And I’ll find the person who fucked this all up, and I’ll hurt them too.”

Max was approaching from behind Victoria, and as she got close, Victoria turned to get out of her way. However, Kate took a step forward and reached out, grabbing her shoulder and turning her back forward, looking into Kate’s eyes again.  
“Victoria. I don’t hate you.”

Victoria reached up, and grasped Kate’s wrist. “You should.”  
She pried the hand off her shoulder slowly, and then stepped back, Max quickly taking her place within arm’s reach of Kate.

“Kate,” she said again as she arrived, reaching out for Kate’s hand, still outstretched.  
After a moment of hesitation, Kate reached down and took it. “Hey, Max,” she replied, her voice breaking.

Victoria didn’t see them hug or anything by the time she turned back towards the roof door, but she heard them both start to cry. She hoped neither of them could see her crying, the hot streams melting into the rain streaming from her saturated hair.


	7. Prompt: Max walks in on Victoria playing video games.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victoria is very salty, but she deserves it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon changes:  
> \- Max successfully averts the disasters of the week of Life is Strange  
> \- Kate is saved  
> \- Max and Victoria are friends? Maybe?

“I SAID I’M GETTING ZERG RUSHED YOU GOONS! HELP ME!”

Gods, everyone on the Starcraft servers were horseshit at the game these days. Everyone with an iota of competence spent all of their time on Starcraft II servers on a higher tier than she could maintain. This was probably wise because, to be perfectly honest, playing on a laptop made her significantly slower at the game due to the reduced screen size and slower rendering.

“GREAT! JUST FUCKING GREAT! I’VE GOT LIKE THREE WORKERS AND NO PYLONS. NAH, NAH, AND NOW MY WORKERS ARE ALL DYING.”

Why did she even play on servers that didn’t include no rush five minutes rules. The zerg were just bitches. What else could she expect from this? She was perfectly aware that this was one of those games with an obsessive level of game balance but she could hardly claim to care - it was just no fun to be forced to be on the offensive fifty seconds into a game that was supposed to last up to a potential half hour.

flowrblades02: mayb u should stp bing a salty mf  
flowrblades02: :)

Which, of course, resulted in Victoria just hitting the Windows key and right-clicking the application, closing it all at once. She always forgot that people on Starcraft servers were just the worst people.   
She just sat there for a moment before she pulled off her headset, moping in her chair. She collapsed slowly against her desk.

Someone in the back of the room cleared their throat, and Victoria spun around in her desk in surprise. Max Caulfield stood just inside the door, biting her top lip nervously. Victoria exhaled, not really having had the time to build up a panic response before relaxing.  
“Oh … hey there hipster. What do you want?”

Max looked around as if this question were off-the-wall. “Ahh … not much. Sorry about your workers?”

Victoria shook her head, then looked up, noticing a box of those dry Famous Amos impersonation cookies from Whole Foods that are ridiculously overpriced. “Oh … no, zerg players are just assholes. Is that a peace offering?” Victoria gestured towards the cookies.

Max looked down at her cookies. “Well, I guess. They were more of a bribe to get you to stop playing but I guess Juliet took care of that.”

Victoria became confused, sinking down in her chair a little but still focusing primarily on the cookies. She had to get them now that they were almost in reach. Nevertheless, she had to ask, “How did Juliet do anything?”

Max shrugged, deflecting. “Oh, I don’t know. Here, cookies? We can share as a compromise.” Max waltzed on over and sat on Victoria’s bed, opening up the bag.  
Nevertheless, once Victoria had a cookie in her mouth, she was not deterred. Instead, she glared at Max, who was refusing to make eye contact. “What did Juliet do?” she questioned again.

Max’s eyes darted up to the corner of the room, forcibly avoiding Victoria’s. “Uhhhhhh,” she began, and Victoria emitted a sound of disgust under her breath. Max continued, “After you know, sexted Zachary, she may have … bought a copy of Starcraft and started stalking you on it, zerg rushing you whenever she sees you.” Max hurriedly shoved a cookie in her mouth.

“What, what the fuck?”

Once Max swallowed, she seemed pretty eager to give a follow-up explanation, “Yeah, actually, for about three weeks now we’ve all been meeting in her room and watching it. It’s really funny.”

Victoria lunged forward, and Max flinched, thinking she was going to be strangled or something, but instead Victoria claimed the bag of cookies and held them against her chest. “Get out!” she yelled, and all of Max’s pouting could not get her the cookies back.


	8. Prompt: Chloe receives a blood transfusion from Max and gains her powers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After running a series of experiments with her new time powers, Chloe decides to try the big jump.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon changes:  
> \- Jefferson is dead  
> \- Nathan is detained  
> \- Sean Prescott is detained  
> \- Kate is dead

 

> **Max:**  Hey, Chlo?  
>  **Max:**  I think someone else might have rewind powers  
>    
>  **Chloe:** hold up still driving  
>  **Chloe:** Oh, sick, why do you say that?
> 
> **Max:**  Well, I keep rewinding.  
>  **Max:**  Except I’m not doing it.  
>  **Max:**  Stuff is just sort of rewinding at random parts of the day.
> 
> **Chloe:**  And you remember it?
> 
> **Max:** Yeah, that’s normal - why wouldn’t I?
> 
> **Chloe:**  IDK.

Chloe, satisfied with a fourth-ounce bag of weed she’d picked up from Frank, started up the path to the lighthouse. At a certain point, if she kept this up, she would have to change her name to Penelope, but for now, it just helped her relax at the end of the day.  
She had hoped Max wouldn’t notice the rewinding. She hadn’t noticed the first one, the big one. About a week ago, Chloe had been sideswiped by a drunk driver (while hardly having been in better condition herself), and her truck had rolled. She had accumulated several lacerations across her torso and sustained a severe concussion. When she was taken to the hospital, they discovered she had lost two pints of blood and she received an infusion of A-. Within seconds of it flowing in her veins, Chloe was awake, so incredibly awake, and so incredibly confused. She felt her accident happening over and over, felt the hospital bed, felt the junkyard’s earth in her fingers as she dug up Rachel. She felt them all, and when she reached out, she could grab them.

She hit her brakes before ever entering the intersection. A large black SUV zoomed through a red light, and she was never hit. Her wounds were gone - no bandages on her head, only her blue beanie. She had texted Max, and Max remembered nothing.  
She played with it a little, but she didn’t want to push it like Max did early on. Even if she was characterized by recklessness, she didn’t want to imagine all of the ways in which things could go wrong if she was noticed using it, or if she hurt herself.  
Her first game had been simple. She took a hackey sack and tossed it forward, then rewound time after it fell, moving to where it would fall and catching it, playing pass-back with herself in her room after Max had gone home. It only took a few seconds of rewind, which left her a little winded, but didn’t really cause her pain and discomfort.

The second one had been a little bigger. She walked into a convenience store, grabbed a few beers, and walked out. When the cashier had attempted to call the police, she just rewound the second his hand touched the phone, and even when she started to feel light headed and a headache formed, she forced the rewind until she vomited on the sidewalk outside. She had taken back a full fifty seconds.  
She knew, by this point, more about the extents of Max’s power. She could withdraw several minutes at time, so long as she didn’t black out sometime within those minutes. Chloe, on the other hand, hadn’t been able to push a full minute, and anything past the slivers of time it took to take back an offhand comment or catch something in the air had triggered one of those stress nosebleeds that Max got. During the game with the hackey sack, Chloe had actually come up with the terrible/brilliant idea of just using a tampon for her nostrils.

She also quickly noticed that Max was not oblivious to her rewinding. The first time she’d used it, she had taken a selfie with Max’s camera, then tried to rewind it before Max noticed, but the camera just printed it out anyway, and Max had grunted as a webpage she was on backed up in a timey-wimey sort of way. Max thought she might have just done it accidentally, but Chloe quickly realized the mistake.   
Chloe could also see Max rewinding now. Objects would fly back onto desks, awkwardly-asked questions would be revised. Once or twice, Max had even tried to use it on Chloe herself, but Chloe had, after duplicating some of her words, simply asked - “Did you rewind me just now, Max?” and Max quickly admitted to it.

Chloe sat down at the park bench at the top of the hill, adjacent to the light house. She reached into her denim coat and slowly withdrew the object of today’s experiment.

God, and there she was again. Chloe had done her best to tear down each and every one of the posters she had put up, to stop the presence of the eyes that could never look back at her. God, would they even want to? Frank had said she was part of Rachel’s problem. Maybe, under the circumstances, Rachel could forget that, she could fall back in love with Chloe … but maybe not.  
The picture didn’t even look like it was the two of them together. That’s why it had made such a good missing poster, but now the distance between them seemed so poignant. She wondered how she’d ever missed it.

Chloe took a long breath, not really sure how this worked. She just stared at the picture for a long time, trying to bring the whole thing into focus, trying to see all parts of it equally. She tried to remember the moments surrounding it, back in Rachel’s room. How everything smelled, the music they had on … all of it. But it did not do any good. 

Chloe grew frustrated, but she held onto the memory. “Maybe …” was all she said aloud, and then she rewound. She grasped time and wound it around her palm, and forced it back. Here, by the lighthouse, it was hard to even see time rewinding - things did not change much from moment to moment. What really struck her was the sounds - the whispers she heard as she rewound. They made no sense, but they chilled her, because she knew the voices. Hers. Max’s. Rachel’s. David’s. Mom’s. Just whispering to her, taunting her as time wouldn’t go back any faster.

Blood dripped from her nose, but she didn’t break her concentration. Time started to siphon itself into her blood stream, the pressure rising, filling her constricted body with heat. It was like air into an oven, and her skin kept it all in, baking her insides. She felt like, if she just kept rewinding, then the setting sun would just roast her alive.  
But she couldn’t. The blood just kept dribbling down, but that was nothing like a bullet to the head. She was dizzy, but it was nothing like smelling the rot of her girlfriend. Who cared. Who cared.  
Even as she fell to the ground, vomiting, she couldn’t let time go. The picture was crumpled in her hand, and finally, her vision gave out. It was only for a moment, but it forced her, along with everything else, to let go of time.

When the symptoms subsided, Chloe was already crying, collapsed on her knees and leaning all the way forward, hair nearly touching the ground.   
A minute later, she received a text.

 

> **Max:**  It happened again. Someone rewound time - quite a lot of it. My smoothie unblended itself. It was pretty wild.
> 
> **Chloe:**  …

That ‘writing message’ ellipses lasted for quite a while. Then,

 

> **Chloe:** It was me. I rewound time.
> 
> **Max:** … thank you for telling me, Chloe. What did you just try to do?
> 
> **Chloe:** Really?  
>  **Chloe:** That’s it?  
>  **Chloe:** Not ‘hey Chloe, since when do you have time control powers?’
> 
> **Max:** You got the blood from me; they told me while you were still unconscious. Not, like, the doctors - the blood people. Apparently they shoot you a text if they use your blood.
> 
> **Chloe:**  WHAT?  
>  **Chloe:**  YOU REMEMBER YOU OATMEAL-COATED RAISIN?  
>  **Chloe:**  WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY ANYTHING?
> 
> **Max:**  I thought you might not remember …  
>  **Max:**  And when I realized you were rewinding you didn’t seem to want to bring it up so …  
>  **Max:**  What did you just try?
> 
> **Chloe:**  Your photo trick.
> 
> **Max:** Why?  
>  **Max:**  Oh.  
>  **Max:**  You tried to save Rachel, didn’t you?

Chloe clicked the info button and hit call. Max was quick to pick up.

 _Chloe:_  “Why can’t I do it, Max? Why can’t I go back?”  
_Max:_  “I don’t know, Chlo. Maybe you didn’t get all of my powers? How are you doing?”  
_Chloe:_  “Real fucking shitty right now, actually.”  
_Max:_  “Yeah I … I imagine.”  
_Chloe:_  “I mean, how fucked up is this? If we just had a picture of you two, none of this would have to happen. You saved me so much with this stupid fucking power but I can’t stop it, not once.”  
_Max:_  “Chloe …”

Chloe held her phone in her hand for a moment, but just sat there crying for a moment, not wanting Max to hear her anymore. But that didn’t matter.

“Chloe?” came the voice again, except this time it wasn’t from the phone.   
Chloe was quick to her feet, but as she spun around, she quickly lost her footing and stumbled, still light-headed from rewinding and vomiting. “Max?” she asked; “How are you here?”

Max ended their call and slipped her phone into her pocket. “I’ve learned from tricks with selfies …” and with that, she closed the distance between them, and wrapped Chloe up in her arms. And that was all it took for the tall but so, so fragile girl to collapse into her best friend.  
“What world gives us so much power … and still … I can’t save her?”

Max didn’t have an answer. She knew the question well, so well, ever since three weeks ago, when she was on the roof with Kate, and it had all failed her.

“We’re not gods, Chloe. I’m so sorry.”


	9. Memories: Chloe Price

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe uses her new rewind and enters the photograph of her and Rachel

_A continuation of[this fic](http://meditatemoremedicateless.tumblr.com/post/129692345399/chloe-gets-a-blood-transfusion-from-max-and-starts), in which Chloe gains Max’s rewind._

“But that’s not good enough!” Chloe cried, almost wanting to shove Max away but unable to stand on her own at this point, in every sense of the phrase. The tiny brunette just held her with surprising strength, and every part of her just felt unraveled. Rachel had, for a full two years, been everything to Chloe. Every other aspect of her life had fallen apart, and Rachel was the only thing that kept Chloe in any semblance of a human. But now she was the opposite. Now she was the thing that made Chloe feel cold and alone no matter where she was. Max stroked her back, as if it could soothe her at this point. All that was left was for her to collapse from exhaustion hours for now, Max thought.

When Max saw the crumpled image of Rachel and Chloe blow towards the edge of the cliff, at first she just thought that maybe, maybe that was best. Maybe it was right that Chloe did not continue to carry that picture around in her pocket day in and day out. Maybe . . .  
It blew over the edge, and Max could not live with that. She rewound.

“Huh?” Chloe asked, suddenly hugging air. She was somewhat used to this affair by now though, and had the good mind to look around her - it didn’t take long, as she found Max standing near the edge of the cliff, standing upright as she lifted the photograph just before it’s untimely demise. “Oh, oh, shit, thank you-” Chloe trotted over to her friend and took the picture from Max’s offered hand. She covered her mouth with her spare hand for a second and pulled it off to the side, as if she were trying to remove lipstick. “Thanks, Max. I let it go.”  
Max nodded, and took Chloe’s spare hand into her own. Chloe’s hands might be large, but Max could still wrap her hand around Chloe’s palm easily enough. She pulled the bluenette over to the bench, noted the vomit, and turned to drag her over to the map they had marked the location of their secret fort onto. They both sat on the edge of it, and after a moment of silence, Max gestured towards the crumpled picture Chloe was gazing down at.

“Tell me about it. That picture,” Max said aloud, as if it were neither a request nor a demand, but a casual observation of the circumstances, like the weather.  
Chloe nodded to herself, but stayed quiet, as if trying to recall the details again. Max gave her the time she needed as she tried to put the pieces together. “It was . . . I dunno, eight months ago. I came over after a fight with my step-shit and Mom - I don’t remember what it was about, but I was pissed off. Rach, she, um, she had a record player, and when I was angsting out, we’d listen to records. She had, like, everything recorded after the forties, although we almost never actually talked about music. She put on some, like . . . I don’t know, but I always liked Nemesis, so it might have been something from them. We sat and smoked, and we talked about moving down to LA, no warning, just packing up in the middle of the night and disappearing.  
“We were like that a lot, you know? We knew it was horseshit and everything, but the dreams are what kept me going a lot of the time. Knowing, once we got the money, we’d just be gone, and I could write letters to Mom and everything but Arcadia’d just be gone. No surprise we never did, especially ‘cause of her and Frank but . . . God, even when everything was shit, we always thought it could be  _good_ , you know? Like, it was. Nothing could stop us. Nothing.”  
Chloe choked a little, and Max rubbed her back with her free hand. Chloe had barely so much as said Rachel’s name in the past several weeks. Once Chloe had killed Jefferson, she had pretty much just shut down, shut it all out, and acted like it never happened. Well, that’s not quite right - she went to bed every night dreading her nightmares, and she rose every morning having barely slept, haunted by the ghosts of Rachel and Jefferson. Max knew, because she hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep since the day she got her powers. All she saw were bullets in Chloe’s skull, unless she was seeing Kate’s broken neck, blood slowing leaking from her mouth.

Chloe heard something . . . very strange in that moment. The words seemed to grow out of nothing, but they came from below her: _“Number nine, number nine, number nine . . .”_  she became aware, now, that this wasn’t just below her, but it was coming from the photo as if it were a speaker. She inhaled sharply.  
“Max,” she uttered quietly. “I think I hear the Beatles from the photo.”

Max paused her rubbing and looked over at her friend. “Are you . . . sure?” Her voice was soft but doubtful, as if this were just Chloe’s wishful thinking  
But Chloe nodded confidently. “I’m pretty fucking sure I know the White Album, yeah. What do I do?”  
Max took a deep breath as she tried to understand how to describe the process. “Here, um, just focus on the photo, keep trying to remember what was going on.”

Chloe just kept nodding, and there was some panic in her voice as she began again, “Okay. I guess we were listening to Revolution 9, not Nemesis. We decided we didn’t have to accept our fates here in Arcadia. We decided tonight would be the night we escaped - not seriously, but just a little fantasy. So we decided to, you know, have a little fuck-you to this shithole. That’s when we took this photo, and why she was staying so stoic. She didn’t want to show anything in front of a defeated enemy, she just wanted it to be over . . .”

The sound of the record was pulsating as if it were right at Chloe’s ear, and the image no longer seemed attached to the paper it was printed on. Instead, it was rising up, as if it were going to envelop her, but she didn’t stop, though that freaked her out. She just kept talking until suddenly, suddenly, she felt like she was being pulled down, like the Lex Luthor Drop of Doom had just reached its summit and now there was nothing, only gravity and no space, just falling.

_Flash._

Chloe blinked, and coughed as her lungs were filled with smoke. She leaned over a little, freshly light-headed and dizzy, and she found a small hand patting her back, just as there had been a second ago. Revolution Nine continued from the exact point she’d been hearing it, seamlessly.  
“You okay, Chlo? Want to take it again?” Chloe froze when she heard the voice - at least, as well as she could amidst her coughing. Still, she stuttered out a few more before she could raise her head and turn, her eyes locking onto the hazel eyes of Rachel Amber.

Chloe’s reaction was not what she would have wanted it to be. Her mouth covered her hand as she barely squeaked out: “Rachel?”  
The tiny blonde’s head cocked to the side in concern at Chloe’s sudden change of tone, brow furrowing, wide lips turning down at the shift from anger to . . . what even was this? She wasn’t even sure, in this context. Chloe tended to stay angry for longer periods than this, and sadness generally gave way to anger, not the other way around. “Yeah, what’s wrong babe?”  
Her big girlfriend didn’t respond normally, though, but instead practically lunged towards her, wrapping her in her long, muscular arms, and held her tightly against her chest - which was quite the reversal from normal. “Rachel, it’s you.”  
“Yeah, yeah, it’s me sweetie, hey there,” she assured softly, her words cresting into a high pitch made to comfort, and she quickly returned the hug, wrapping her arms around Chloe’s shoulders and holding herself a little closer to Chloe’s neck, kissing it softly. “You okay?”

Chloe tried to get control of her breathing, knowing from Max that these things did not last forever, and she’d only have so long to change the past. She put a finger under Rachel’s chin and pulled it up a little, so that she could look at Rachel clearly again. The smile that came across her face was so confused she had no idea how to decipher the emotions she was feeling, and Rachel had no way to interpret them, either. “Rach, c’mon. I know we joke about leaving, but let’s do it, okay? Let’s do it right now. Or tonight, so I can get some stuff from home, but let’s just leave, okay? Arcadia doesn’t have anything for us anymore - but like, LA could be incredible, right? Right?”

The same mix of pity, humor, and adoration that Rachel always got when Chloe brought up escaping came to her face. “It would be, Chlo, of course it would. But you know we can’t do that. We don’t have any money, I have no portfolio, barely any experience . . . but we will soon, I promise. You know that, we’ll do it.”  
“But-” Chloe protested, on the verge of tears.  
Rachel was quick to interrupt her though, not wanting to go too deep down this road. “Hey, hey, hey now. I love you.” She leaned up a little, and brought her lips to Chloe’s.  
Rachel. Rachel. Chloe only realized now that she had forgotten what she felt like. What she smelled like, what she tasted like though the day. Right now, all she could feel was the heat of the room and for that brief second Rachel’s lips again, but it stunned her, because Rachel stopped feeling like a ghost in that moment, and became real again.  
“We’ll go soon,” Rachel promised a few seconds after their kiss broke, and sat upright instead of against Chloe, leaning her forehead against her tall, crinkled girlfriend’s.

As Chloe for fumbled for words, she realized she had a secret cache available from her terribly, terribly spoken best friend. “Yo, Rach? I . . . I’ve gotta tell you something. Something . . . hardcore. But I need you to believe me, okay? No matter how crazy I sound, please just trust me.”  
Rachel nodded, her eyes just centimeters from Chloe’s, bright and blue, their eyelashes nearly touching. “I do. Tell me.”  
Chloe took a ragged breath in, and blew out as she exhaled. Then a quick breath in. Her words felt like air being dragged out of her. “I’m . . . from the future. I came back to save you.”

Rachel did not giggle, or cock her head to the side curiously, or give Chloe a puzzled look, or make a joke. None of the stuff that Chloe had expected in response. Instead, slowly, slowly, their foreheads drifted apart, and Rachel looked her in the eye from several inches away. She swallowed loudly. “So . . . I guess that means I’m dead, huh?”

Just hearing that from Rachel herself felt like a blow in Chloe’s gut, and she imagined that her breath must have escaped like a soul to a dementor’s kiss, but she was just shot in silent shock. Even back here, she could not escape that.  
A sad smile crept across Rachel’s lips. “My power moved to you, huh? You . . . can time travel.”  
Now it was Chloe’s turn for a loud swallow as her world was turned upside down, which was all that seemed to happen in the world of her and Rachel. “You . . . could do it too? You were a chrononaut like Max?”

Rachel raised herself up a little on her knees, and reached forward, running a hand through Chloe’s hair, not quite meeting her eyes anymore, instead looking at the point where she pushed her hair behind her ears. “Past tense - I really am dead, I guess. By Max do you mean . . . Caulfield? Your old friend?”  
Chloe nodded, though bothered that Rachel wasn’t answering her clearly, though it was clear enough what she meant at this point. “Yeah, she, she came back to Oregon a few months ago. We teamed up and she had super powers. She just sent me back in time, just now, through a photo. That one, the one we just took,” she said, looking down at the abandoned digital on the flood between the bed and the wall, where a tall mirror stood - that they’d been using to set up the shot.

Now Rachel’s gaze drifted even further from Chloe, and her voice began to sound distant as she realized that, sometime soon, she was going to die. She had no idea how, but she was certain it was coming. “Well . . . it’s good she got the power next, huh? But. How? How do I die?”  
Chloe’s melancholy twisted at that, returning to her eternally-accessible bitchface, though coated with more menace than Rachel was exactly used to. She was used to rage, but it was always aimless - this seemed cold and narrow, though, like a knife. “You don’t have to! It was Jefferson, Mark Jefferson, your teacher. He overdosed you, but, Rachel, Rachel, look at me-” Rachel complied, unable to disobey the intensity in Chloe’s voice right now “- I killed that motherfucker, all right? He killed me, but Max brought me back, and I killed him with with my bare fucking hands, okay? Okay, I killed that motherfucking piece of shit and i-” her words were rapidly escalating towards hysterical and unintelligible, and Rachel wrapped her arms around her again and brought her to her chest as she sat upright on her knees, a very normal position for them - and Chloe completely broke down into sobs.

Rachel’s parents didn’t even come to check; they were used to these sounds from Rachel’s room by now. Chloe cried, and Rachel comforted. It was just a sound of the house, like the records in Rachel’s record player.  
It was Chloe, though, who made an effort to resume the conversation after a minute or two. She had so much saved up - Rachel could only react as the next eight months of Chloe spilled out. “And you lied to me, Rach. You don’t just deal to the Vortex Club for Frank. You’re fucking him behind my back, and you never told me.”  
It was so strange to hear the present and the past spoken of in the same sentence as if there was nothing between them, but in this situation, there really was no difference between the past and the present - or the future and the present. Time travelers may see time differently, but they recognized its inevitability better than anyone. “Yeah . . .” Rachel said softly, knowing there was nothing she could do to make Chloe un-know that, and knowing it was not worth it in comparison to the weight of everything else. Chloe knew. She couldn’t rewind her confession to save Chloe’s feelings. Chloe knew.

“Why?” asked Chloe  
“I love him,” Rachel replied.  
They were both so deadpan in this, it was hard to recognize the immensity that this was to both of them.

Chloe’s lips were nothing but a flat line. “Don’t you love me?”  
It hurt Rachel so much to hear the tone in that. For who knows how long, Chloe had genuinely been wondering if Rachel loved her. She had been doubting it for days, or weeks, or months. Whenever she found out, she came to the conclusion that it all came at the price of Chloe herself. Rachel shook her head - not at the words, but at the genuine thought. “Of course I do, Chloe. You are my love; you’re my first love, you’re the One for Me. But I love him too. It’s complicated.”

Chloe just stared up at her, glassy-eyed and quiet, and for a moment, she got to feel something a lot like Max must feel - getting to pull out something that hadn’t happened yet in a conversation as a justification for something else. “But Frank said . . . that I was part of you problem. I was part of why you wanted to leave Arcadia. He said I couldn’t understand you.”  
Rachel felt like she was being lashed for her sins, because it was her words and thoughts coming and cutting her now - she’d never consented to have them exposed, but here they were, flushing out her pain. She swallowed again, not wanting to turn this into hostility, but still defensive: “I . . . I thought you couldn’t! I . . . we. Frank and I. I went to Frank when I was too stressed out - for drugs ‘n shit, you know. And he became part of them. He became part of my escape, like a vacation. And I love my vacation, but I love my life, too. I need you, because you’re soft and my everything, but I need him, because he’s firm. I-” she was speaking fast, a lot like Chloe often did, because there were all these things she had wanted to say for so long and now she finally could, she had to. But Chloe didn’t intend for her to finish them.

“Do you just love broken people, Rachel?”

The question was not a lash. It was a stab in the heart.  
The tears finally filled Rachel’s eyes.

“No, no, no . . . you’re not broken. You’re not broken. I love you. You’re perfect. I love you so much, Chloe, I wish you knew.”

Chloe’s hands came to Rachel’s cheeks, and they were big and soft and warm - they didn’t have the anger that Rachel expected behind them. They were just there, and they brought Rachel’s eyes along them, up towards Chloe’s. “Rachel. I can be firm and strong for you. I can do anything for you - shit, I have. I searched for you for months. I found your body. I killed your killer. I traveled through time to save you. So just do this for me: run away with me. We can even take Frank, I don’t care. Just don’t let it happen. Don’t die.”

But Rachel could see it. She could see the white rim of time closing in, creeping through her windows and shrinking her room. She shook her head, bluejay earring bobbing a little in response. “You don’t get it, do you?” she asked; “If I don’t die, you can never travel back to warn me. Max never gets my power to send you back, and I never know how to stay alive. I die all over again.”

“NO!” screamed Chloe, hands dropping from Rachel’s cheeks to her shoulders, physically shaking her in frustration. “NO! FUCK THAT! YOU CAN’T, you can’t, you can’t . . .” but she saw it too. She saw the borders of reality closing in on this freeze-frame of time. It was all coming to a close. “You can’t forget this,” she begged.

Rachel reached up, and peeled Chloe’s hands off of her shoulders, taking  them in her own. Their tears both fell down on their hands and laps. “I won’t forget, Chlo. I won’t forget. I love you - I won’t forget. I love you. I love you. I . . .” but it just kept getting quieter and quieter, as if Rachel were being muffled.

And Chloe was enveloped in white as the memory disappeared.


	10. Prompt: After the Vortex Club party, Victoria becomes the social pariah, not Kate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victoria basically had it coming, tbh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon changes  
> \- Brooke is a badass  
> \- Warren isn't a huge dick  
> \- Courtney is straightedge  
> \- Taylor is not a bully

Victoria could not imagine what sort of response she would get from her video. She had stayed up for perhaps an hour after the party last night, well past 3am, all things considered, and had enjoyed totally ignoring breakfast and showering to try and sleep off last night’s beer and vodka. While it was perfectly trashy, she felt no remorse as she uploaded it under its own URL, then sent links to it on her Facebook, Instagram, and other social medias. That bitch Kate had been criticizing her, staring at her, trying to make her look bad ever since the two started at Blackwell.

Victoria had a bit of a ritual every morning. While she did not deeply devote herself to social media, instead focusing on maintaining a professional online presence, she liked to make sure that everything went well online: photos had likes, her replies were considered, Hayden and every other Blackwell had sent an appreciable number of emoticons in response to a selfie, stuff like that. She had to give the people what they wanted, and in this case, she knew they would want that snot-nosed brat to be crushed. She wouldn’t dare look at Victoria in the eye again. And the few friends Kate had wouldn’t even try and get the video taken down - no significant social medias were hosting it, only links to it.

She was rather pleased to see that she had seven notifications on Facebook as soon as she brought it up on her phone, but was surprised to see that it listed several people who had responded to the video already, but she only saw one ‘Like’ - from Nathan. That didn’t seem right. She clicked on the notification, and was quickly met with a barrage of comments, some even from as early as 5am. On a Friday!

> **Trevor 4 Bernie:** Yo, Victoria, you know this is srsly uncool, right? Take this shit down.  
>  **Nathan Prescott:** shut the fuck up trevor - if you had been there, you would have seen this slut last night then you wouldn’t talk shit. don’t be a twat: kate was loaded and this video is exactly what she had coming for her.  
>  **Brooke Scott:**  Seriously, Nathan? You’re supporting this sort of behavior? Kate is a sweet girl and this is a horrible invasion of privacy, nevermind illegal; Victoria clearly does not have Kate’s consent to film or publish this. What did you stupid fucking Vortex Club assholes do to her - she’s clearly drunk in the video, and all I see is Zach and Logan and fucking you taking advantage of her. You’re all disgusting. I hope you get expelled, Victoria, both of you. I can’t believe you’d do this to Kate.  
>  **Warren Graham:** Yo, what Brooke said. This is clearly inappropriate, plus it provides a record of illegal activity on the part of the Vortex Club. You need to get this shit down for your sake, nevermind Kate’s.  
>  **Alyssa Anderson:**  This is so incredibly disrespectful and inappropriate, I can’t believe you, Victoria. You should have helped Kate, not tried to publicly humiliate her. I don’t hear you cracking jokes at the boys, do you? @Zachary Riggins @Logan Robertson @Nathan Prescott. Grow up.

Victoria could not believe all of these worms were responding this way. Seriously? Warren was calling her out? Brooke? At least Alyssa made sense - she hung out with the little church bitch. She struggled through her tiredness, but she still managed to type clearly enough

> **Victoria Maribeth Chase:**  lol, really guys? You’re going to put this on me? Just look at Kate. This is ridiculous - she’s just a two-faced skank and I think we have a right to see what a hypocrite she is. And the guys are just being guys, shit B, what do you expect?

She closed her Galaxy down and sat up to get dressed. She looked like shit, and quickly recognized that she needed to take a shower. 9:10. She did not have a lot of time before class, and she wouldn’t have the protective barrier of Taylor and Courtney this morning. Not that she’d need it - it’s not like anyone was going to stick up to her in person. They never tried. Nobody could look her in the eye for long.

* * *

When Victoria entered the shower room, she was unsurprised to find it a slick mess, as it always was by the time class time rolled around. That was essentially the only reason she used it so early, before 8. However, what she was surprised to find was that it was occupied by only one other person: Kate Marsh, who was just now emerging from the far right shower. Oh, good, an easy target to get her confidence back. That wasn’t so bad. Victoria plastered a smirk on her face and strode forward confidently towards Kate, who didn’t even seem to register that Victoria was there.  
“Hey Katie - great party last night, right? You looked like you were having a killer time?”

That’s when Victoria saw Kate’s eyes. They wouldn’t stop shifting around, but they were bloodshot, and purple coated underneath her eyelids. She looked like shit. She must have gotten a lot drunker than Victoria even noticed.

“What? Victoria … I … um, I guess? I don’t really … remember.”

Well, that wasn’t very fun. But Victoria could work with it. She continued forward, and Kate stepped back a little as Victoria entered too close to her personal space, so Kate was essentially wedged between the furthest back shower and the wall. “Oh? That’s too bad. It seemed like a night to remember. I had no idea you were so experienced with boys, Kate.”

This seemed to only confuse Kate further, and her eyes still wouldn’t focus on Victoria, despite the fact that she dominated Kate’s field of view. Her hands wrapped around herself, protecting herself. Victoria hadn’t even started intimidating her … that was weird. “What? What happened?”

Victoria leaned down, trying to grasp this moment of triumph firmly. A grin coated her face - it may not be as powerful without makeup, but Kate was small, so small. She was not going to make this blow up in Victoria’s face. “Oh, I’m sure it’ll come back to you - it’s all over the web at this point. You got drunk and macked on Zach, on Logan. You even came onto Nathan, not that he’d stoop that low.”

Kate’s hand lifted to her mouth, and covered it as she sunk down a little. Victoria’s eyes were quick to notice her wrists, which looked like they’d had an adhesive applied to them - thin impressions noted they’d been indented by a fabric, and hair had been torn out. Victoria sighed, “Oh, now Kate, who’ve you been fucking around with? This is so much richer than expected - you weren’t just making out with whatever trash you can find, you’ve been a proper slut, haven’t you?”

As Victoria reached into her pocket to retrieve her phone to take a picture, however, Kate literally fell to the ground, out of combined fear as well as general instability. She must still be tipsy, maybe even still stoned from whatever she provided for the club last night.

The door to the shower room opened. “Hey, Victoria, what are you doing?”

Victoria turned, and noticed the tiny little girl, Stella Hill, entering the shower room. “Oh, what do you want, bitch?” Victoria snapped, not appreciating the back up. Of course, the late sleeper would emerge at a time like this.

“Back off of Kate, Chase.” Victoria was a little stunned as Stella charged right up to Victoria, ending within a rather intimate, aggressive distance. Seriously? This girl was at least five inches shorter and one of the skinniest girls in school - what the fuck was she going to do? Still, Kate was down and not getting back up.

Victoria rolled her eyes as she turned around, standing casually to show how unthreatened she was. “Oh, please, lecture me junkie. I’m just filling Kate in on what she missed last night, I thought she’d like to know.”

Stella made a sound of disgust and glared up at Victoria. “Get the fuck out, Victoria - what you did is awful, and you don’t have to try and make Kate feel worse about it.”

Then, Alyssa poked her head in and wobbled inside, as she tended to do. Victoria was outnumbered. She hated that. “Ugh, whatever, you sluts have fun. See you in class, Katie~” Victoria said, half-singing, and exited the shower room. She may have a big advantage on these girls, but she wasn’t getting naked with this much hostility around.

“What’s going on?” Alyssa asked, just as Victoria passed by her.

* * *

Victoria, once she got dressed, went to seek Taylor and Courtney out by the ‘Rachel owes me money’ trees. They were waiting there, but as she strolled over to them with a practiced smirk, they averted her gaze, both burrowing their faces in their phones.   
“Sup biatches?” Victoria asked. Courtney’s eyes flicked up. Unlike Taylor, it appears that she hadn’t been drinking the night before, which was pretty typical. Even if she acted a bit like a drone, she was really dedicated to her academics at Blackwell, and wouldn’t risk sullying her record with illegal activity on school grounds. It was hard enough to get her to drink over at someone’s house, nevermind at Blackwell.

“Nothin’ much, Tori.” Courtney just went back to her phone. By peering down, Victoria became aware that Taylor was on the Facebook thread - and it appeared several more messages had been added.

Victoria laughed, “Oh, right, that. Did you guys get a chance to look at Kate’s video yet?”

Courtney averted her gaze for a moment, but slowly, Taylor raised her eyes, and they met Victoria’s. Taylor looked like shit. “What the fuck, Vic?”  
Victoria was taken aback, and her face pinched together in confusion. “What? Seriously, you too?”

Taylor shook her head. “I can’t believe you would do that … I mean, you published that video online! What were you thinking?”

Victoria provided her with an incredulous expression for a moment, then made scooping gestures with her hands as if she were spoon feeding the explanation to a very dumb Taylor: “I was thinking … this ho bag has been disrespecting us for weeks? She talks purity and Bible all day long and then she tries this shit? Is nobody else thinking … this is exactly what she had coming for her?”

Courtney was now the one to roll her eyes. Seriously, she was going to roll her eyes at Victoria? That was some bullshit. “Oh my god Victoria you just don’t get it. She handed out pamphlets in shit. She got loaded and kissed some guys. Now you’ve tried to ruin her life. It’s a complete overreaction and it’s so pathetic.”

Victoria’s arms crossed in front of her chest, and she loomed over the other two girls.  “Seriously? So, what, you’re turning on me? This is bullshit. Kate is just some sl-”

Courtney took a step forward, and she was right in Victoria’s space. The lunge was so sudden that Victoria actually took a step back, and her illusion of dominance was temporarily broken. This seemed to make Courtney smile for a moment. “Oh my god - you’re done. Take that shit down and get a grip, Tori.”

Victoria was nearly agape, but she had just enough control at the end of this, while humiliation flooded her, to curl her lips into a sneer and imitate her best friend: “Whatthefuckever,” she spat, and pushed past them both to the main campus.

* * *

It wasn’t until Victoria came back from PE that things got particularly bad, though. She went back to her room to escape, as she quickly discovered the skater gang talking shit about her, which wasn’t really anything new, except that Taylor and Courtney were no longer there to back her up, and she was out of her element without Nathan around, and she hadn’t seen him all day. When she found herself back at her room, though, her slate had been erased. No longer did the invulnerable Gandhi quote stand as a barrier between her and the trashiness of the girls around her. Instead, there was just a little caricature of Victoria holding a camera in the corner of the slate, with the caption:  **“I bully others to hide the fact that I’m a classless bitch”**. Inscribed into the cariacature’s pearl necklace, rather clearly, were the letters ‘DD’ … Daniel DeCosta? Seriously? Daniel fucking DeCosta was sneaking into the girls’ dorm to give her shit? How the fuck did he think he was getting away with this?

Victoria was only stowed away in her room for so long before there was a knock on the door. She initially ignored it, but then came the voice: “Victoria Chase? Principal Wells would like to see you. It’s Ms. Grant.”

She sighed, staring up at her ceiling. The words escaped her much louder than intended: “No way. No fucking way.”


	11. Memories: Kate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate Marsh needs her friends again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is part of a special request, asking that many characters gain Max's powers and use it to explore memories and create alternate timelines.

“So, how does this work?”

Kate had brought her picture along across the hall. She had been back at school for five days, and Max, Brooke, Warren, and Alyssa had seemed to be the only people comfortable enough to try and talk to her in that time. While Victoria had been able to visit her in the hospital, some motivation had failed her, and she settled for not so much as meeting the bright-eyed Christian girl’s gaze, which was in a way an improvement.  
In the hospital, though, on Saturday, just before Kate got out, Max had come to her with a proposal. A fantastical one, and if it hadn’t been for a very display from the brunette herself, Kate would not have believed a word of it possible. Max offered her the possibility of going back in time. She said she could not undo what had happened to Kate, but she could give Kate the possibility of creating her own version of things. It was an extraordinary idea, but Max had demonstrated an ability to read minds, teleport, and otherwise accomplish the impossible, and Kate was willing to believe in her strange genie of a friend.

“You just need to focus on the photograph as hard as you can. When you think you’ve got it - not just the photograph, but the memory, as clear as you can - I’ll push you back in time, into this variable point. All you’ve got to do is remember; I’ll handle the rest.” Max was too busy brushing Kate’s forearm as they sat across each other, closely placed between Max’s couch and her chair pulled up against the couch - she didn’t really take the time to take a look at the photograph.

Kate nodded briefly, trying to wrap her mind around what would happen. Perhaps this was all some incredibly elaborate prank and she was being filmed right now? It would just be some gag to laugh at for a few days? … no, no, Max was not like that, she was a friend.  
“Okay … okay. I’ll try.”

Kate lifted the photograph close to her face, and concentrated as hard as she could. It was a selfie - an early form of selfie, actually taken by Max Caulfield herself. It featured Maxie (as she had been affectionately called at the time), Katie, and Alyssa at a sleep over. Twizzlers, goldfish, decorated crosses all over the place (it had taken place at Alyssa’s house, whose family was highly catholic). Kate just seeped in the memory … and then, there was a flash.

She blinked her eyes for a moment, adjusting to the dim, artificial lighting of the room after the brief flash, and looked around her. Maxie sat back from supporting herself on Kate’s shoulder, leaning back against one of those large beanie bag chair thingies so popular among young teenagers while she drew out the fresh photograph. Alyssa sat back down flat after her brief lunge to photobomb, grinning wide as she had to show off her braces while placing a peace sign obnoxiously close to the camera’s lens, cutting off about half of Maxie’s face in the process.  
Kate was in a daze, but neither of the girls seemed to immediately notice, so Kate tried to redirect her attention to the source of artificial light: a 90s anime by the name of Sailor Moon in its original English dub. God the voice acting was terrible - Kate had discovered she preferred the original Japanese some years later, when Max had been off in Seattle. However, now that she thought about it, she had missed the Sailor Says portions at the end of episodes …

Oh, goodness, now she could see why they were having a sleep over! They had just started the second-to-last episode of season 1; you know, the one where everyone is brutally murdered in a style completely inconsistent with the rest of the show. Although, the English dub officially counted them in the ‘dark kingdom’ or whatever, but they were totally dead. The Japanese version was a lot more hard core and a loooot gayer.

Kate tried to speak up a little, to integrate herself back into this memory. She cleared her throat, a little surprised at the pitch and timbre of her voice, “Jupiter is my favorite,” she confessed, in preparation of her imminent demise. Oh god, she remembered this now - they were all going to freak out and cry so loud by the end of this episode that Alyssa’s parents would ask them to turn it off but they couldn’t because there was only one more episode left in the season well then they’d have to try and keep it down people were sleeping some people still had to work on Saturday mornings …

Maxie was waving her polaroid avidly, hoping to see the shot developed as soon as possible - “Well, she’s kind of the mom of the sailors, isn’t she? And you’re kinda like the mom, so that makes sense. She’s so sweet.”

Alyssa seemed to concur pretty quickly, but she had rather different priorities: “Yeah, totally - plus she’s super strong and cool. I still think Serena’s my favorite, though.”

Maxie quickly agreed, “Me too. She feels, I don’t know, real, but also incredible.”

Kate was briefly confused on multiple levels, turning around to look at the even-more-freckled Max, the girl who once kept her hair all pulled back out of her face because she was ever so serious but her parents wouldn’t let her cut her hair short like a boy, and that made her get sun burn after sun burn on her face and ears. Her first confusion was resolved when she remembered that Serena was the original English dub’s interpretation of Usagi, so she was left with the much bigger one: “I’m like … the mom?”

Maxie nodded, though she was still looking at the TV instead of Kate. “Of course! You’re always taking care of us, you know? That’s what moms do.”

Kate was stunned, and at first blathered out a little confused, quiet nonsense that successfully drew Alyssa’s attention, but not Max’s. But then, she swallowed, and tried again, “I take care of you guys?”

Finally, Maxie looked away from the screen as well, but it was clear to Kate she was focusing at some little detail on the shoulder of Kate’s pajamas, not Kate’s face. Max had gotten a lot better at hiding her aversion to eye contact since she came back to Arcadia Bay, Kate realized. You had to be pretty close to realize she stared at your lips instead of your eyes, if she was forced to look at you at all. “Of course you do. You’re on top of things and look after us. We’re Sailor Moons. You’re Sailor Jupiter.”

That cracked a grin on Kate’s face like … like she couldn’t believe. Like she hadn’t had in a long time, even that day when Max had rescued her from that bully of a security guard. Kate lurched forward a little, and wrapped her arms around Maxie’s shoulders. “Thank you so much, Max. I just want to take care of you … like you take care of me.”

Maxie physically squirmed in Kate’s embrace. “Hey, ah, you know I don’t like hugs like this unannounced. C’mon, get off - and it’s Maxie, not Max.”

Kate laughed, delighted at all these little nuances, but she heard it as if from another room. The edges of her vision turned white and everything began to brighten and shrink, sort of like she was having a panic attack. But, at the moment she thought the attack, or whatever it was, was going to overwhelm her, she found herself back in Max’s room, her arms now wrapped around the photographer, the single polaroid photograph still in her hand.

“Kate … you didn’t change anything. This is the same reality …” Max seemed concerned, but she was holding an enthusiastic Kate Marsh in her arms, and that was a rare treat for her, so she was going with it.

Kate nodded, her cheek almost against the back of Max’s neck. “Yeah … I. I don’t think I could trade this all away. I couldn’t forget. I just wanted to remember.”

Max’s breath entered sharply. “Oh, Kate,” she murmured, and squeezed Kate’s sides a little, providing a little sigh of delight from the bun-headed blonde.


	12. Prompt: Alice comforts Kate one day, knowing that she is sad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate has only just returned to Blackwell after her stay in the hospital, following the events of "Memories: Kate Marsh". Kate believes in forgiveness and redemption, and it appears Alice does, too.

Kate never imagined she could have such tense silence with her own rabbit.

Max had just dropped Alice off back in Kate’s room. Although all of the furniture was in its rightful place, everything was off, indicative of the sweep security had made through her room while she was gone. She was glad it wasn’t like one of those scenes where the frustrated police officers trash a room out of contempt - it was neat, and the same, and yet unfamiliar.  
At least Alice was back where she belonged. But Kate felt like she owed her an apology.

Kate wasn’t getting anywhere staring at Alice from her bed. This wouldn’t do.  
She stood and approached the cage, but Alice made no moves, conveyed no expectations of being released. Even when she unlatched the cage and pulled Alice out, she just hung in her hands until Kate set her down on the floor. Even then, on the floor, Alice simply kept an eye on Kate from arm’s reach away, almost unmoving except for the rocking motion of her breathing.

Kate knew things couldn’t just go back to the way they were. The way things had been had made her miserable, long before that video ever ended up online or she had been taken. She wanted them to just get better, like seemingly everyone had promised when they’d seen her or sent her notes in the hospital.  
Now that she was back here, it seemed like everyone just wanted to ignore her, except maybe her old friends, and even they were tense. Even Alice.

“Alice?” Kate asked.  
Predictably, there was no response.  
Kate sighed, shifting her attention to the door, the ceiling, the mirror that someone had uncovered.

“Alice, I’m sorry that I was gone. I know Max probably made a good mommy, but that wasn’t right. You didn’t know what was going on.”  
Kate wondered if she should feel ridiculous. Everyone had insisted that she not apologize to them, had instead apologized to her. Even Victoria. But Alice wasn’t pretending to feel sorry. She had been abandoned, and that one-eyed look was unforgiving.

“But I’m here now. And I’m not going to leave you again, okay?”  
Kate offered out her hand to scratch Alice behind the ears, but Alice made no move to approach.

And, just a little bit, that broke Kate’s heart. Alice always, always loved her unconditionally. Kate knew that was still true, but there was a trust broken.

Kate returned her hand to her lap, and although her throat felt constricted, she remained determined.

She had one more idea. She hoped Alice would accept.

Kate hummed for a few seconds to get the tune in mind, and then so softly that it could barely be considered singing, began,

 __[I see trees of green, red roses too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0xoMhCT-7A)  
I see them bloom for me and you  
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.  


 _I see skies of blue and clouds of white_  
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night  
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

As Kate sang, finally, finally, Alice seemed to acknowledge her, and she stood up on her hind legs for a few seconds.  
Kate smiled, but continued to sing, offering out her hand. Alice ignored it, instead walking right up to Kate and hopping up into her lap.  
Kate pet along her soft fur as she kept going.

 _The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky_  
Are also on the faces of people going by  
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do  
They're really saying I love you.  


 _I hear babies crying, I watch them grow_  
They'll learn much more than I'll never know  
And I think to myself what a wonderful world  
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world.

Kate wasn’t sure if that meant Alice forgave her or not. But it was enough.


	13. Prompt: Kate spends Christmas with her sisters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate has been having a tough time back with her family, but her sister Lynn wants to make sure she still knows she's loved.

Winter break had been terribly uncomfortable. Kate hated to admit it, but she thought she might actually prefer Blackwell, filled as it was with monsters and saints, than the stifling house filled with people who didn’t know how to talk to her. There was less chaos here, sure, but she often found herself with too much time to ruminate. Loneliness was something she had cherished more before she attended Blackwell, as she had always enjoyed long, interrupted sessions of reading, playing the violin, painting watercolor, or binge-watching Netflix. She had always been actively involved in the community, but she often found that such activities left her socially depleted.  
And that had been okay. But now, no one was really comfortable with displays of independence from her. Nobody wanted to drop her off for volunteer work. Everyone seemed uncomfortable when she played her violin, and honestly, she had been devoting too much time trying to perfect her children’s story to really focus on it.

Kate was not suicidal. The way in which the school had rallied, at least to her face, had been a great comfort, though a lot of the friendship thrown at her in the first week of her return had been depleted rapidly. She still texted Max often, and Stella and Alyssa maintained a lukewarm contact with her. In addition, an experimental, periodically-initiated texting session was underway with Chloe Price, and Kate had noticed that Taylor and Victoria had both started liking and leaving comments on her SoundCloud, though she hadn’t added anything since two weeks after … well, you know.

Today was a little different, though. She wasn’t sure what she expected, exactly, but she had not expected to be woken up at 6am by a quiet knock on the door. Followed by a small voice: “Kate? Katie, you awake?” the quiet knocking came again, and Kate dragged herself out of bed. She slept light ever since that day she had woken up on the bench outside of the girls’ dorms.  
She opened the door quietly, and found her youngest sister, Lynn, standing there in her pajamas.

“Merry Christmas, Katie,” Lynn said, and with a small step forward, wrapped her arms around her older sister. Kate’s arms were quick around her small shoulders, a little surprised. Oh right, it was Christmas… Kate knew that.  
“Hey there - merry Christmas, Lynn. What are you doing up so early?” Kate stepped back to let Lynn into her room, which was a practice she had not used to extend. She had always kept her room so neat, and was nervous to have others in it, especially her mother, who was often careless about moving things around.

Kate moved back to her bed and sat down, pushing back until her back was against the wall, keeping herself uncomfortable enough that she wouldn’t just slip back into unconsciousness. Lynn followed, not speaking until she was sitting cross-legged on the foot of Kate’s bed. She tucked messy hair behind her ears. “I don’t know, I just … I wanted to see you before mom was up, you know?”  
Kate nodded, though she remained silent. Their mom was always up early, though she tended to not get everyone up for a while. If it was Christmas, she would probably wait until 7:00am to wake everyone up. They would sit together and read the Bible for maybe twenty minutes, and then the girls would open gifts from each other and their mom while Mom made them cocoa and breakfast, then come back for whatever gift her daughters had gotten her. They would have breakfast together and do little more than lounge about until 9 or 10, maybe, when Dad would come to pick them up.

“Do you just want to hang out until mom gets up?” Lynn inquired, and Kate replied quietly with a ‘yeah’.  
They sat for a moment, trying to think of something tension-breaking to occupy their time. Finally, Kate remembered what she thought was a brilliant idea, and leaned forward a little as she asked, “How about the Christmas special of  _How to Train your Dragon_? I think it’s on Netflix,” she assured, and moved towards the edge of her bed.

Lynn loved How to Train your Dragon, so that was an easy agreement. Kate went to grab her computer, and Lynn suggested, “Hey, why don’t we try and get Katrina too?”  
Kate agreed, and she lifted up her laptop and unplugged her charger while Lynn crept over to Katrina’s door. They knocked a few times, but there was no response. Katrina slept much more heavily than her sisters. Kate called out softly, “Hey, Kat?” but still, no response.  
Frustrated, Lynn just opened the door, and Kate moved into the room that had previously been hers. It had been heavily re-decorated to emphasize several of Katrina’s powerful loves, including Harry Potter and One Direction - two facts that were a near-endless source of discomfort for their mother, who viewed her fascination as nearing on idolatry (it’s a good thing that she had no idea that Katrina had written a 36,000 word fan fiction consisting of the five band members attending Hogwarts with some 1,200 readers).

Kate sat her laptop on the foot of Katrina’s bed while Lynn placed her hand on her older sister’s shoulder and shook her slightly, producing a fair bit of groaning from her before she apparently snapped awake, actually whacking Lynn’s hand away from her as she gave the sharp inhale of someone rising to consciousness. When she saw that the intruders were just her sisters, she groaned again, and sunk down into her bed.  
“Whaddu guys want? It’s 6a eeeemmmmm.”

“Come on, Kat,” Kate insisted, opening up her laptop. “We’re watching  _How to Train your Dragon_.”

Katrina continued her low groan as Kate tapped through several pages, getting the short film to load while she plugged the laptop in. Nevertheless, she scooted over and allowed Lynn into the center of the bed, letting Kate sit on the edge of the bed as it began.

Katrina was back asleep within ten minutes, but that wasn’t too much of a problem. Kate sat up, her little sister leaning against her shoulder, and let the slow, cute drama unfold for the next half hour. There was virtually no interruption during this whole time, except during the credits, when Lynn finally said, “I’m really glad you’re alive today, Kate.”

Kate turned her head slightly, bringing her sister’s eyes into her field of view. They were still staring ahead at the screen, but Kate could tell there was still a rigidity in her body, indicating that she was focusing on what she just said than the scrolling credits.  
“Yeah,” Kate responded after several seconds, and raised her arm, bringing her sister from her shoulder down to her chest and wrapping her tightly with her arm. She kissed her hair gently. “Me too, sis, me too. Thanks for this morning.”

“Mmhmm,” her sister assured her, relaxing, aiming to join her older sister in sleep.  
Soon, she was out in Kate’s arms, and a row of suggested movies sat on the idle screen. Remembering a gesture from a friend, she pet her sister’s hair with her freer left hand.  
“Thank you,” Kate said again, to no one in particular.


	14. Prompt: Could you make Kate a superhero doing something chipper and heroic?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate and Chloe are a little late for church.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon Changes:  
> \- Kate is a superhero  
> \- Chloe is a superhero  
> \- Max still has the rewind  
> \- Styled after the Whedonverse's interpretation of the World of Darkness

The huge wooden double doors swung closed behind the two lookouts, who quickly moved to grab one of the nearest pews and push it against the door.

“What the hell are you two doing? You’re supposed to be looking for police!” Cried their leader, who stood on the stand of the church, like some strange, horrific imitation of a priest. His face was distorted, fangs leaving his mouth unable to close properly. Unlike the other vampires, he made no effort to conceal what he was - he was a monster in a church, and no god was coming to smite him down.

The two looked panicked, though, and one of them called, “I don’t know how, but the Iron Maiden is here!” they moved on through the rows while their four other companions seemed to ripple with anxiety.  
The seven vampires had successfully held some twenty hostages inside the church. Just moments ago, they had entered by rushing under blankets from a tinted van, leaving their ghoul’d driver to wait for them several hundred feet from the church, on the street.

“How … could she even know we’re here? I don’t think the police have even been contacted yet.” One of the lackeys, who was guarding a family of five, seemed particularly perturbed. When supernatural situations like this cropped up, it was not unusual for the Iron Maiden to hear about it over the course of an hour or so, thanks to the media and the relatively small area in Arcadia. But she never arrived before the police did - it’s not like she had a scanner and a siren to get her through everything.

## WHAM!

The double doors groaned as they resumed their original position, and one of the guarding four moved to use his weight against the pew to keep the doors closed.

The leader stared a moment at the doors, but then he just growled: “It is no matter. She cannot stand against us all. Bring me the first sacrifice.”

One of the several guards grabbed a man in his forties with salt-and-pepper hair, and began to drag him up forward. Though his family cried out as he was taken, none of them moved to do anything against this - they had only watched as the head vamp drained the actual priest after entering, and their fear was overwhelming.

##  **WHAM!**

The vampire bracing against the pew/door grunted, but confidently pushed back, glad that he had the situation under control.

The head vamp nodded as he took the struggling man from his underling, and the man quickly found he had no strength in comparison - he was jerked down to the ground by his arm, made to kneel out towards the ‘congregation’ in front of the vampire.

“Caine,” began the leader, “today we ask-”

Suddenly, a fist broke through the wooden door as if it were a splitting board, and grasped the barricading vampire by the throat. He barely had time to flinch before his head was smashed into the door repeatedly, and then he was thrown back into the center of the pews.

##  **CRACK**

The doors split open and the pew stuttered back, smashing the disoriented vampire in the face in the process.  
Standing there at the entrance, her sleeve substantially torn, stood Kate Marsh in her Sunday best, which was essentially the same as she dressed virtually every day, but with a particularly stiff overcoat.

“Kate!” cried the man on his knees at the front of the church.  
“Sorry I’m so late! Chloe was being a grouch this morning.” Then, Kate took a step forward, grabbed the prone vampire by his ankles extending from under the pew, and dragged him back towards her. As soon as he was completely pulled out from under the pew and slightly outside, she swung his body around and flung him with incredible force some ten feet outside, outside of the church entrance’s shaded doorstep, and he burst into flame in the light. He howled as he burned, but there was nothing he could do so exposed.

She and the vampire at the front stared each other down for maybe as long as ten seconds. Then, he threw the man he held down in front of him off to the side, and his body smashed rather forcefully into the church’s organ.  
“Shoot her,” he growled.

Three of the remaining vampires pulled out guns of various types - one was an automatic handgun, one was a simple pistol, and another already had a shotgun ready in his hands. Those with one-handed weapons began to unload fire into Kate, but she just strode forward confidently, not so much as her clothes becoming damaged in response to the gunfire, and ripped off a long section of the pew to form a makeshift sort of spear.

The fully automatic clip ended, and the vampires stood there for a moment.  
“Nice one!” she offered, and then spun her long stake around before hurtling it straight towards the vampire on the stand. His body was impaled with immense force, but as he was a moderately important vampire (As it always seems to work), his body began to crumble instead of immediately vanishing into dust.

“Caine will take you,” he muttered before the ash crawled to his face, and his body turned into nothing but ash.

Kate nodded casually, “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

Suddenly, Chloe Price, clad in her traditional tank + denim coat + beanie + ripped jeans, leaned around the edge of the door. A cigarette was in her mouth, but she took a second to pull it out. “You got this, babe?”

Kate nodded as the vampire with a shotgun paced rapidly towards her, clearly intending to just take her head off with a single shot. “Uh huh, no worries. You might want to ask Max if she’s got any selfies from this morning, though, I’d prefer Father Mendez didn’t die this morning.”

Chloe began to scroll through her contacts with her off hand. “You got it.”


	15. Life is Fluff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max and Kate read The Hobbit together, then talk about being parents. It's just a little snippet of nothing.

“Hey, I love this part, let me read!”

Max sighed, knowing that there would never be a time they got through  _the Hobbit_  without Kate insisting to take this portion of the book. This was their third time through, despite the fact that they were supposed to experiment with new literature in these nightly readings. It was just such a comfortable piece, you know?   
Max turned on the bed, her back flat on the bed now, and handed the book over to Kate, making sure to mark with a finger where they were so when Kate took it and rolled over to her side, she’d find it easy to continue on. Max wrapped her arms around Kate’s waist and pulled herself close against Kate’s back, resting her head on the small girl’s shoulder to look down at the pages.

> “It was just at this moment that Bilbo discovered the weak point in his plan. Most likely you saw it some time ago and had been laughing at him; but I don’t suppose you would have done half as well yourselves in his place. Of course, he was not in a barrel himself, nor was there anyone to pack him in, even if there had been a chance! It looked as if he would certainly lose his friends this time (nearly all of them had already disappeared through the dark trap door), and get utterly left behind and have to stay lurking as a permanent burglar in the elf caves forever.

Kate giggled a little at that, but quickly recuperated and continued on with the paragraph,

> “For even if he could have escaped through the upper gates at once, he had precious small chance of ever finding the dwarves again. He did not know the way by land to the place where the barrels were collected. He wondered what on earth would happen to them without him; for he had not had time to tell the dwarves all that he learned, or that he had meant to do once they were out of the wood.”

Max snuggled Kate tighter, and Kate sighed pleasantly for a moment, pausing before they got to the song portion, as Max would insist on sitting up and either reciting it like proper poetry or actually finding a musical interpretation online.

“Why do you like this scene so much?” Max inquired, planting a kiss on Kate’s neck, then just below her ear.  
Kate hummed in appreciation. “Hmm, I don’t know. I guess I just like it when he talks to us directly. Plus, I don’t know, it’s silly. It’s one of those points where you can see that it was meant for kids. I dunno, I just like how much is childish in a serious world.”  
Max’s breath tickled her a little, but she liked it.

Max reached around Kate, grabbing the string that acted as the book’s marker and laying it inside the pages, before tugging on Kate’s shoulder to indicate that she should turn. Kate turned towards her, and noticed that Max was making an effort to establish eye contact, so she returned it, though making sure to look away for little pauses to give Max’s breaks.  
“Kate . . . do you think you want to have kids some day?”   
Kate’s hand scratched up and down along Max’s side, inside her pajama shirt. “Yeah, definitely. I mean . . . I don’t know when, but I know that I want to be a mom. I know life can seem busy as it is, but I don’t want to live as an island unto myself. I’ve always wanted that sort of family, I guess. What about you?”

Max had never really thought about it, and as she struggled to find a response to it, she admitted just that: “I guess . . . I guess I’ve never really thought about it. I . . . have a lot of trouble relating to people who aren’t my age. I’d probably be a crummy parent, unless they like, really liked Tolkein.”

Kate shook her head. “No.” Her voice was higher-pitched and . . . cuter than normal.  
Max raised an eyebrow. “No?”  
“No.” Kate smiled.  
“Care to elaborate, love?”

The smile cracked into a full grin. “You never give yourself enough credit. You’re diligent. You listen. You care about other people’s feelings, and when you look out for someone, you stick by them. I think you’d be a great parent.”

Max brought her hand out from under the covers, reaching up to Kate’s cheek and stroking it gently. “Thank you sweet heart.”  
Kate brought up a leg to wrap over Max’s own, bringing their bodies closer. “But for now, I’m your family, okay? And Chloe and your parents, okay, but me, you understand?”  
Smiling, Max leaned forward to bring her lips to the warmth of Kate’s own. When their lips parted from each other slowly, Max let her eyes slide back open, Kate’s so close and big they ate up much of her vision. “Okay, Kate Marsh.”


	16. Life is Fluff: Another Happy Snippet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate returns from church very sleepy.  
> Just a drabble, a follow-up to Life is Fluff.

Kate never quite understood the people who were restless during church. They’d shift in their seats constantly, so energized by those few hours of sitting and singing that they disappeared like a bolt when things were concluded.

Kate could not bring herself to be one of those people. Sermons drained her, much as reading scripture drained her, as she tried to piece everything together. She would keep her Bible open while people spoke, following along with anything they might reference and keeping notes on hand.

Being faithful, to her, meant being engaged. She had to engage with lessons mentally, engage in services and activities physically, and steadily, steadily engage herself spiritually. She did not understand having an excess of energy after all of that. It drained her.

It was the middle of the day, sure, but when Kate got back home from church, she was nearly in a stupor. It took her three tries to slip off her shoes, and she didn’t bother to take off her tights. The lights were off throughout the house, so she figured Max must still be out running errands. Was she with Chloe today? Kate couldn’t remember. She was so tired.

When Kate opened her bedroom door, though, she stopped in place. A weary smile crept up on her face immediately, and she felt the tiniest jolt of energy reinvigorate her.  
Max lay, fully dressed but for her shoes, face-down in bed, and did not respond at all to the door being opened. The gray-yellow light that filtered in through their blinds gave Kate just enough of a look at Max’s face to know that she was totally gone, as exhausted as Kate had felt.

Max had woken up two hours later than Kate. How _did_ she manage to tire herself out so fast?

Kate made a quick calculation. They were having friends over for dinner at six, and it was about 2pm right now. That meant she could easily take a two hour nap and still have the house ready by the time anyone arrived. Perfect.

Kate slid her skirt down and crawled beyond Max, rolling over to fit herself behind her. Knees locked in behind Max’s, check; arm over Max’s waist, check; the gentle rhythm of Max’s endless mouth-breathing as she slept, check.

Everything was perfect, and Kate fell right to sleep.


	17. Happy Halloween

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Vortex Club uses its black magic to summon up a succubus for a Vortex Club Halloween party

_Buffy-esque AU: Please see "[Kate has super powers and beats up some vampires"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4874371/chapters/11377351)_

“Okay, I know no one is very comfortable writing in Sumerian, but could you please be careful? If we mess this up we’ll get the wrong kind and we DON’T need another mischief demon on our hands.”

Taylor groaned, knowing this comment was almost definitely directed at her. Courtney stood on the edge of the great spiral, looming over the workers actively involved in its creation: Nathan, Taylor, Rachel, and Hayden. Even if she didn’t really hold all that much power in the club, despite being president, none of the other four wanted to pretend they had the precision to make sure the creation of the conjuration glyph went to spec. And, despite the amount of work going into this thing, it was only so large, maybe eight feet in diameter, and it wasn’t like so many people could work on it at once.

It had to be meticulously created - the spiral of the vortex club, but it was just too much for Courtney to tackle all by herself, so she just acted as supervisor.   
She leaned over to inspect some detail that Hayden had just made as he connected his section of a given line of text to Nathan’s, and glared down at it. “You duplicated the line Nathan started on and forgot your own section. Turn the book a little - you’re the lower left wedge, remember?”  
Hayden groaned, but promptly worked to remove his section and begin again.

They were on the bottom floor of the light house, forming the circle out of apparently magically enhanced, colored sand of some form, using wedges to shape the sand into Sumerian script, which ,predictably, they did not recognize. Courtney had photocopied the drawn reference of the glyph from the original ancient text, which she paced around them with, constantly uncomfortable with both the quality and quantity of their work.  
Eventually, though, the work was done, and the five Vortex Club basket members stood on the edge of their demonic creation, a near-perfect spiral all surrounding a strange, singular focus item: a stack of boxes of cookies, but like the thin, wafer-y ones that cost too much. The book had simply, and rather strangely, requested the best cookies cookies available, and Hayden, as connoisseur of cookies and other things to eat while baked, had concluded these were their best bet.

Courtney consulted the book for the next step. “Okay, so, now, five servants must offer their blood at five points around the spiral, and the binding force will form the stabilizing element for the demon to manifest. Give me a minute, and I’ll make sure we get it right.”  
Courtney whipped out measuring tape as well as some actual tape, so she could mark all of the appropriate locations with perfect precision, while everyone else stood near the door of the light house.

“So, why cookies?” Rachel inquired, obviously having been mulling this over for the last few hours since they placed the cookies in the  _exact center_  of the lighthouse’s floor, according to Courtney’s specifications. “Like, I can’t imagine the Sumerians had access to a wide variety. Or, you know, any.”  
Nathan shrugged, his hands stuffed in his jacket as he leaned up against the door. “I’m not sure whatthefuck demons think, but this is one of the easiest demands I’ve ever heard of - my dad once had to sacrifice something like 44,444 spiders to a frog god, and that was just to keep it from eating some property. We just had to get cookies, and we’re getting a succubus for a whole day. Good fuckin’ deal.”  
  
Taylor frowned: “Do you think she’s like, a compulsive eater, maybe? Or maybe she can’t eat when she’s not summoned? It is a she, right? Like, I’ve heard sometimes succubi and incubi are considered the same thing but it’ll be a she, right?”  
Hayden shrugged, not really bothered by the idea of getting a masculine succubus to hang out with for their Halloween party the following night. “Don’t really know. I gue-”

Courtney seemed completely oblivious to the fact that the others were talking, as she suddenly let out: “aaaaaaAAAAND DONE! There we go. Everyone take a place and use the ceremonial knives on the stairs in the box there to cut open your thumb, then place your thumb at the designated spot, and the glyph should activate, if Nathan’s book is correct.”

Nathan rolled his eyes at that - as if there were any books in his dad’s library on demonology that hadn’t been confirmed 10x over save the apocalyptic ones - but everyone sauntered over towards the base of the steps, where Courtney was waiting with an open cardboard box like she was handing out doughnuts. Everyone took their ritual knife and spread out - “make sure not to mess up the sand!” - before looking to Courtney to continue.   
She pursed her lips a little as she stood in place, but then silently cut open her thumb, then looking expectantly at everyone else to follow suit. Groaning a little, (especially Taylor), the girls followed a few seconds later, and Nathan bit his lip while he did it, letting out a stream of swears as the blood welled up over his thumb.  
Hayden, though, was hesitating, the blade still a few inches from his skin. “I dunno, bro. I really don’t like blood.”

Courtney rolled her eyes, “Oh, come on. It’s like, a few drops.” She lifted her hand so he could see it as a reference, but a line of blood that had made its way down into her palm only made him swallow nervously.  
He looked back down at his hand, but everyone was staring at him now. “Ahh... shit . . .” he said, closing his eyes. He raised his hand a bit dramatically, so his thumb and the knife hung in front of his face, but still, he didn’t do it.

“Bro, seriously, come on,” Nathan urged.  
Hayden grit his teeth, squeezing his eyes especially tight closed, and lowered the knife to his finger before slitting it open.  “Ow, ow, ow, fuck,” he whined, eyes now snapping back open, and immediately dropping the knife to the side of the circle to inspect the cut.

“Okay, now, everyone - at the same time - press your thumb to the cement directly in front of the tape I placed down, okay? On three. One, two, three.”

Everyone crouched down, and placed their thumbs where it had been specified. When they left their bloody fingerprints there, for a brief moment, nothing happened.  
Nathan said, “So, do we like, have to-”  
And then, their thumb prints began to glow bright red, like a sith’s light saber. Or, at least, that’s how Hayden and Courtney thought of it - the other three hadn’t watched the original trilogy 40 or so times. From there, lines formed of that same light spread out, connecting the five points until a geometrically perfect pentagram was formed over the spiral, which had lost all of its color, somehow turning all of the colorful sand black.  
Then, the cookies caught fire.

Courtney gasped, “Oh, shit, the sacrifice! Fuck, it’s ruined! We’re done! We’re so done!” But as the flames consumed all of the boxes, it seemed to grow much larger than it should from such a small amount of fuel, several feet tall. The fire did not spread, but soon it stood nearly six feet high as it burned away the small stack of cookie boxes.

And then, all of the flames disappeared. The sand seemed to vanish, leaving in its place the entirety of the Sumerian script carved into the cement surface. The pentagram’s light faded, and everyone’s thumbprint, too, faded.  
And, standing in the center of the spiral, a box of chocolate in their hands, was a tall blonde woman, dressed very differently than how they had all imagined. She wore a pale yellow button-up with a fine cashmere sweater over it, the shirt tucked into what looked like dark purple skinny jeans with a sort of velvety look. Short blonde hair was pushed behind her ears, though everyone took rather little notice to it, considering the curved, dragon-like horns extending from the front of her skull back towards the top of her spine.  
Taylor was the only one to notice her nails, which were short and somewhat stained, noting like the manicured, pornographic beasts she had imgained. They looked like an artist’s hands.  
Modestly dressed. Modern. Small breasts. Short hair. Rough, stained hands. Not what they were expecting.

But for some of them (please see: Rachel and Taylor), even better than they’d hoped.

She strode forward, off-handing all of the boxes of cookies under the crook of her left arm while offering out her right hand to shake everyone’s, starting with Courtney. “Thanks for summoning me for Halloween! It’s a favorite of mine. My name is Victoria,” - she finally reached Taylor, and the hand shake between them lasted longer, and she paused to make more than glancing eye contact with her. “But you can call me Vicky,” she said, the comment 100% directed at miss Christensen.  
Hayden and Nathan shot her thumbs-ups, and Rachel winked at her.  
Taylor flushed red.

Courtney cleared her throat. “Hi there Vicky. I’m Courtney Wagner, and this is Hayden, Nathan, R-”  
“I’m Rachel Dawn Amber and I’m really gay,” Rachel interjected  
“-achel . . . uh, yeah. And that’s Taylor. We were hoping you could help us spice up a party tomorrow.”

Victoria’s eyebrows darted up as she inspected the lot of them, and a smirk fell on her face. “I’ll tell you what.” She looked back to just Taylor now, and gestured to her. “Taylor buys me dinner, and we’ll meet up with you at your party afterwards. Sound good?”

Everyone swallowed, looking nervously over at Taylor. Taylor looked up into the bright green eyes of the demon, and she too swallowed, likely visibly sweating. “Yeah.”  
Victoria took a step back, looking between Rachel and Taylor, then gestured for Nathan to move out of the way of the door, which he quickly did. She held placed her hands on her hips, forming little loops with her arms. “Well, Rachel, Taylor, if you would do the courtesy of showing me what this town has to offer, I’m sure your friends can take care of the party decorations until then. Ta ta!”


	18. Left Behind: Everyday Heroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max Caulfield has just won the Everyday Heroes contest, but there's one person she wants to share this moment with. Chasefield fluff. Takes place in the universe where Max turned in her photo.

“Now, I know this isn’t how any of you wanted to win or participate in this contest. You may feel that an opportunity was taken from you among the struggles our campus has undergone this week. But I just want to thank each and every one of you for participating in the Everyday Heroes contest, for representing yourselves as well as Blackwell Academy. It is with great pride that I see how you have continued your academic pursuits while supporting one another through turmoil. As the principal of this school, I would like to say that you are all every day heroes, and you all show a potential that fills me with pride for this school and its students.”

Principal Wells was not many extraordinary things. He was not a great administrator. He had not been a great husband in either of his two marriages. He was not a particularly great man. But he was quite a decent speaker, for though the class of eight photography students knew this was a pre-designed speech for the school and city newspaper, many of them did stand up straighter to hear his acceptance and appreciation, his eyes bouncing around to settle on each and every one of them for a brief moment, never letting them wander onto Juliet’s camera or the journalist on the other side of the room from her.

“But now, I think it’s time to announce the winner of this contest. I hope we can all accept this personal victory as a communal one as we send the winner to San Francisco this Friday.” Principal Wells took an additional moment to look at everyone briefly one last time. “The winner of the Everydays Heroes Contest for Blackwell Academy is Maxine Caulfield. Congratulations, Max.”

Max’s eyes widened in shock, and the applause began before she even had the chance to take a step forward. On the other side of the arc of students was Victoria, and Max saw her lips purse into a fine line as she followed Daniel and Kate’s lead and began to clap. Then, she stumbled forward, removing her hands from the pockets of her hoodie, and found Principal Wells’s hand outstretched. She fit her tiny hand in his for a brief moment, and he guided her to turn towards the cameras to smile for a moment as they shook.   
Michelle Grant took a few steps forward, and offered Max a rectangular frame wrapped in loose brown gift paper, which she gingerly accepted. She peeled off the paper, taking sure to dispose of it by handing it over to Wells, who dropped it onto Jefferson’s former desk before the two both held the frame, revealing the print of Max’s photo to everyone.

More camera flashes, and more applause. And Principal Wells was speaking more, something about Max, or the contest, or something, but now it was Max’s eyes that flickered around the room, watching everyone’s expressions.  
Kate practically cheering.  
Hayden just sort of grinning, clearly not very invested.  
Taylor clapping loudly, then quieter when she realized Victoria probably wouldn’t want her to be too excited.  
Stella clapping regularly, and being one of the first to cut off.  
Alyssa smiling like she rarely smiled the whole while.  
Victoria’s lips slowly curling into a bit of a smirk the longer the clap continued, but clapping as long as anyone but Kate.  
Juliet pausing from taking shots to give Max a thumbs up.  
Daniel clapping slow, as if he were uninterested, but still smiling supportively the whole time.

Principal Wells was done speaking, and handing off Max’s photo print entirely to her. “Thank you so much, Principal Wells,” she said, and bowed a little, not wanting to hold the photo with just a single hand, and held it out to be clearly viewed a moment longer before stepping back into the crowd of her peers.

* * *

 

In the minutes that followed, virtually everyone in the room stopped by to talk to Max individually - not so much about her photo, but about going to San Francisco. Yes, I was am so excited! No, really, I thought you were going to win, I loved your piece Taylor - and fellow tardy assignment doers, right? Oh lord, Kate, no, I couldn’t do any of this without you, you’re an actual hero.

But there was one person who stood near the corner of the desk closest to the door, leaning on it and watching this little procession while talking to Wells, or Juliet, or whoever was close, shooting Max direct looks and smirks when she could. Victoria, of course. They weren’t threatening, exactly, but they made Max a little uneasy. At least . . . well, they made her nervous. But she was too flushed with victory to let it get to her.  
When Victoria finally turned to leave, alone even, that made Max especially nervous, and she broke away from her friends with a, “I’ll be right back, I just wanna talk to Victoria for a sec.”

She saw Victoria several steps down the empty hallway, and hurried after her, calling, “Hey, Victoria, wait.”  
Victoria turned aroundfolding her arms over her chest, face already stuck in its smirk. “Oh, hey there Max,” she said with no hint of actual surprise. “Congratulations on your win, though I’ll still contest that it has more to do with your whole involvement in taking down a serial killer than your photography, but I suppose if you hadn’t, I might have won and been going to California with a serial killer, so I guess I’m all right with you getting this one.”

Max just chuckled, aware of this rumor, though pretty sure there was no substance to it. “I don’t think they were influenced by school rumors - at least, I hope not. I just, um. I wanted to see how you were doing. I know this could have been a big break for you, and we both know you really deserve one.”

Now Victoria’s hands fell to her hips instead. “Oh, well, how considerate of you, Max Caulfield. But my work will be in a gallery without school sponsorship soon enough, don’t you worry about that. In fact, I need to go check on a possible deal via e-mail, if you’ll excuse me,” she replied, turning to stride away.

Max made a quick step, reaching up to grab Victoria’s shoulder a little, not sure how to properly communicate what she was doing, but it was enough to get Victoria to turn around, really confused and a little unnerved.  
“I really like you,” Max blurted out.  
Victoria blinked. Many, many times, her head shaking minutely as she tried to process what she’d just heard. So she tried to clarify aloud, “Um, what?”  
Max froze, realizing how fucked she was. So she just went with it all the way. “I. Uh. I think your photography captures an artistic rendering of yourself through its symbolic self-projection. I look at your subjects and I think they are beautiful, not just because they are, but because you captured them in a way that reflects your own beauty and vulnerability. You are strong and smart and really goddamn funny, even when you’re kind of being mean. And when you’re not being mean, or just playing at being nice, I think you are wondrous, and I really like you.”

Victoria took a long, quiet moment to process, to collect herself, just to find words. But when they came out, they were almost scripted, or rehearsed in some way. “When I look at your photos, I know, though maybe half of them actually feature you, that they’re largely meditations on adolescence, and chaos, and all sorts of pretentious bullshit you pretend you don’t subscribe to. But you capture them as if they are not the focus at all, like you’re ironically pointing out one’s vanity and self-centeredness amidst something so confusing and powerful, like you are the fool, or the vanity, but you’re actually the wise man. And I think that is unique. I think you have a gift. And I admire you. And I’m so glad that you choose yourself as a subject, because I think you’re beautiful, and I like that you give me an excuse to look at you and get to know you all at the same time, because if I looked at you half as much as I’ve looked at your photos, you’d know how I felt about you.”

Max was crimson by this point, so confused on how to express anything more that she began to go further and further off script. Not just her verbal script, but her total script for behavior. She offered out her hand, palm upward, and looked up at Victoria’s lips for a moment before nervously looking away from even that closeness.  
She was amazed when Victoria’s hand settled over hers, her wide, warm fingers over Max’s wrist.  
“So, do you want to tell me how you feel now?”  
Victoria nodded, the word small between her lips, “Yeah.”  
And she took that step still between them, and bringing a hand behind Max’s neck, and pressed her lips to Max’s. Max’s hand turned so her own fingers could lace with Victoria’s, and she stood on her toes to make kissing Victoria easier, her other hand reaching up into Victoria’s hair.

So, understandably, Max was a little stunned when Victoria pushed her back a little, taking a moment to understand that this was playful. But Victoria was grinning. “I feel like I really fucking like you, Max Caulfield, and like you should find some showy way to ask me out again so I can make out with you some more.”

Victoria turned and started down the hall.  
Max sputtered, “I could turn back time, kiss you right in front of Jefferson, take a picture of it, and turn THAT in for the contest.”  
Victoria actually laughed out loud as she went. “Now  _that_  would have been cool. Call me when everyone’s done praising you, and we can talk more about how much you like me.”  
Max cupped her hands together to form a megaphone: “MY BODY IS READY!”  
Victoria just kept laughing.


	19. Life is alt!Fluff: Thanks, Max

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max and Taylor are just getting back from the hospital, having visited Taylor's mom. They take a break in the woods before heading back to do their homework. Takes place in LiS's alt!Universe.

Things were much more tense on the way back from the hospital. Max and Taylor simply sat side by side on the bus, their fingers laced together and tried to focus on the [music in their shared earbuds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOKuAigsrec) instead of trying to talk. Nonverbal communication was where they excelled, so they didn’t try and branch out. Max just drew little circles on Taylor’s palm with her thumb and they kept things blotted out for awhile.  
They both knew perfectly well that Taylor’s mom would be fine, and it was easy enough for Max to distance herself from the situation knowing that. But, for Taylor, it was just seeing her mom in that place that filled her with anxiety that wouldn’t dissipate until she was finally out. Her mother hated hospitals. Taylor hated them, too.

It was good Max had come, though. She was always good at cracking jokes when things were tense, and Taylor knew her mom appreciated that. She wondered if her mom would like Max nearly so much if she knew about their relationship . . . it wasn’t exactly a conversation that there had been much reason to have. What would the conversation even be like? Don’t bring the quirky, funny girl around if you put your mouth on her? If you do, I’ll kick you out, and you’ll have to go live with her at the school - oh wait. 

When they finally got off the bus, though, Max pulled out her earbud to ask, “Woods?”  
Taylor nodded in confirmation, and said, “Yeah, woods sounds nice.”

The two made their way across the campus, beyond the dorms, and trekked out beyond the tobanga, continuing out into the pathless mess of wilderness for a few hundred feet before coming across a familiar tree, split almost into four separate trees, its insides charred black as if it had been split by lightning. Max turned off her iPod and stuffed away the ear buds as the two climbed upon it, settling themselves upon the separate little trunks, their shoes compressed down into the tiny base of the tree, meshed into each other’s. Max lay down as well as she could in the crook of the tree, uncomfortable as it was.

A small smile appeared on Taylor’s face, and she reached into her pocket to produce her phone, clicking on the photo app. She took a few snapshots before heading over to Tumblr and dropping her favorite one into Max’s very own tag: “#oh deer i’m queer.”  
Max pretended not to notice, her hands crossed over her chest and her eyes closed.  
But that afforded Taylor with an excellent opportunity. When she slid her phone back into her hands, she pushed off the trunk a little to lean over Max, steadying herself with one hand on the branch behind Max’s head. Max must have been able to feel her movements from their feet, but nothing more than a bemused smile crossed her face as Taylor’s head dropped down, and their lips met gently in the heart of the tree. Their kisses were light and short, but Taylor liked it when Max had to reach up to clear the hair out of her face for them to kiss at this angle, as her fingers brushed along her temple and behind her ear. Being with Max was easy, and that was like nothing else. Kissing was kissing. Hand holding was hand holding. Laying quietly was just that. There was never anything more than what was.

“Thanks, Max. For coming with me today. You’re my rock.”  
Max planted a little kiss on her forehead. “Well you’re my . . . geodude. Like a rock but cooler.”  
Taylor rolled her eyes and groaned, muttering, “Ooooh fine, I get it, you want to play Pokemon.”  
Max’s eyes lit up with delight. “Can we?”

Taylor sat back against her charred tree seat. “Well, fine, but we’ll have to go back to the do-”  
Max unzipped her bag and produced two Nintendo DS. Taylor’s eyes fluttered in temporary disbelief. “We don’t want Victoria to know we’re training so much, after all.”

There was the rustling of underbrush some distance away. “ARE YOU TWO TRAINING POKEMON WITHOUT ME?”

Taylor flipped open her DS and started it up, and Max followed suit. By the time Victoria arrived at the tree, they both were in the main menus, and their tall girlfriend glared down at the both of them, hands on her hips. “We’re supposed to be doing the Nuzlocke challenge together!”  
Max just shrugged, then reached into her bag to produce a third DS, this one with significantly more modifications and stickers on it.

“How . . .?” Victoria asked. “When did you-”  
“Gotta catch ‘em all, Tori.”  
“But I hide i-”  
“Gotta catch ‘em all.”

Victoria groaned, taking her DS, and tried to wedge her body in with the other two, taking a moment to give Taylor a kiss on the cheek. “How did everything go with your mom?” she asked, turning the power on.

Taylor shrugged, eyes flicking up to Victoria and then to Max: “It was all right, though I think Mom might want Max for a daughter instead of me. For some reason it’s so exciting to hear someone’s a photographer at an art academy when you’re not paying for the cameras or the schooling.”

Victoria nodded, dropping into the world of _Pokemon X_. “I hear you. My mom seems to love Max too - and my mom doesn’t like anyone.”  
A pout that was . . . somehow smug crossed Max’s face. “I guess I’m just good with moms. I keep them from getting freaked out by either of you two.”

Her girlfriends glared at her - the recluse, and the charm machine. Now she grinned good naturedly. “Love you,” she promised, defensively.

Oh, they were so double battling later.


	20. Amberfield: Pan Estates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max works on preparing her portfolio to submit to get into Blackwell academy with her favorite model, Rachel Amber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon Changes:  
> \- Max's father died in a crash, not William  
> \- The Prices moved out of state  
> \- Rachel became Max's dealer, then a photo subject, then . . . this

Based on [this AU concept.](http://meditatemoremedicateless.tumblr.com/post/131334810384/but-imagine-it-was-all-the-other-way-around-max)

Pan Estates made an ideal location for photo shooting for a number of reasons. One, Max hated irregular noise distractions, and while Pan Estates was frequently noisy during its construction, she could hardly call it irregular. Two, she and Rachel could always acquire a full buffer of walls between them and the outside world when they had access to completely empty housing, meaning they could be as free with their photography as they wanted. Thirdly, and this was key: the construction workers could not give less of a fuck about the two of them being there if they even noticed they were, because none of them made enough money to stop resenting the Prescotts, and this was the smallest of rebellions. They got a little antsy if Nathan came along, but even then, they would hardly feel right kicking out the boss’s boss’s son without the possibility of getting into some shit for how they handled it.

So as they made their way into a house without an address, or even a street name, they knew precisely where they were going despite a lack of familiarity with this exact house. The living rooms were the heart of these ‘estates’, and they had a lot of clear wall space, which was exactly what Max needed for the photo shoot today.  
As was pretty typical, there would be a lot of set up before they really got to start shooting, but seeing as Max actually came into this session with an idea of what she wanted, there was an exceptional level of preparation (for them) this time around.

Rachel carried in all of the photography equipment while Max came prepared with the extra stuff this time. Max unloaded her binder, filled with well over a hundred polaroids, labeled ‘Rachel portfolio 2012′, as well as three wheels of scotch tape, each of which looked partially used. Rachel set up the tripods and mounted up both of their cameras while Max got started, placing a roll of tape on the back of every single polaroid, at first just lying them face-down until Rachel was ready.   
Once Rachel finished with the tripods, she began to take the polaroids and add them to the bare wall, following along with Max’s already meticulously-constructed pattern for them to be organized into. On the back of every photo sat three rows of notes, all underneath the dates they were taken. The first line only stated: Y, B, U, or R. Yellow, Black, Blue, or Red. These designated their original clusters and had helped Max organize them. Then, there was a R and C designation: Row and Column. Max had spent hours in her room trying to find the perfect 100 photos, declare their dominant color, pick her four primary colors to work with, then organize all of the photos in relation to each other in a way that seemed pleasing.

And, after perhaps half an hour, they were organized correctly, and Max was almost content. All they needed to do was adjust the light sources for the shots. The two broke out a long row of plug-in lanterns, and quickly realized that they had not previously communicated a solution to this problem.  
“I put the pictures as high as I could reach.”  
Max nodded.  
“And we’re almost exactly the same height.”  
Max nodded again, glad that she wasn’t made to explain in any mime-ier of a way.  
“I fucked up.”  
Max shrugged, searching in her bag for the heavier tape.

“Okay, but, I’ve got the solution. Let me stand on your back.”  
A pointed side-glare from Max.  
“What? C’mon, I’m like 110 pounds, you won’t even notice.”  
Max’s eyebrow tilted down just enough so that Rachel would know precisely how much she disapproved.  
“Aww, sweetie, come on - I know I messed up, but now the shot will look even better, I promise! It’ll only take a minute or two, tops.”  
Max continued to give the look, but Rachel was only returning a big pout. And what was Max ever supposed to do against big, pink, pouting lips?  
Max let out a long sigh, signaling her defeat.

Rachel wrapped her arms around Max’s shoulders with a little squee in the process, squeezing her and laying her head against her shoulder. “Thankyoubabe! I’ll make it perfect, don’t you even worry.”

 

* * *

 

 

About five minutes and a severe back ache later, Max had her lantern light source, and got to turn off the living room light, leaving only the rectangle of lights surrounding the rectangle of photographs. Yellow in one corner, black and blue adjacent to it, red in the opposite corner. Rachel wore a white button-up shirt in contrast to everything else, hanging over her short shorts that she changed into for the sake of the photo. Blonde hair swept to one side, placed over the yellow corner. Black dragon tattoo snaking its way up her leg, hovering over the black corner. Bluejay feather earring and neck bared with her hair pushed to the other side, her little sliver of blue. Red was the only missing element, but Max stripped off her own little red hairtie, and Rachel quickly wrapped it over her wrist.

They took many versions of the shot: Rachel over the portfolio of herself, Max’s portfolio. Facing Max, facing away from her. Arms crossed or at her side. Lantern lights or the original lights (that being the last set they took). And Max would take every picture with both her Polaroid as well as Rachel’s own digital, so Rachel could edit her own versions of the shots later for class. Just little directions, little changes, Max making sure never to inspect her shots before taking the rest, not until she was separated from her power to make more shots. She always contradicted herself when she had the power to change things. Consistency, image, theme - these things required that she trust herself. And taking portraits of Rachel was one of few things she trusted herself to do. She didn’t believe anybody could capture her quite like she could. And maybe she was right.

When that little shoot was done, they began to take it all down with much more ease than they had set it up, just peeling off the pictures, then the tape from the pictures. It wasn’t until nearly every picture had been laid out to be returned to the binder that Max paused her process, and looked up at Rachel, who was pulling all of the photos down.  
Max swallowed, as she always did in preparation for those occasional moments she spoke. “Take one of me.”  
Her model turned around from the wall, head cocked to the side for a moment at the unusual request. They took pictures together all the time, but Max was never the subject alone.

Max’s instructions were never spoken, but Rachel soon understood. Max removed more photos from the binder, those never designated for this project, and mixed them up with photos from the wall. Photos of Rachel, photos of Rachel and Max, photos of them and Nathan, them and Victoria Chase, or anyone else they partied enough with to be included in the photos.  
Max lay down, and began to place the photos along the sides of her body, or over her neck, or anywhere. Rachel helped, covering and surrounding her in these photos, these memories, whether they could be remembered as anything other than a photo or not. Soon, Max was awash in a sea of them.

Rachel removed her camera from the tripod, and set up a shot.  
Max smiled, but it wasn’t for the camera.  
“Oh, Max,” Rachel sighed.

 

* * *

 

 

“Ooooh, Max,” Rachel groaned, but Max had no response but to continue as Rachel’s hips bucked, as if she would somehow throw Max off with her face still held so tightly against Rachel’s body.  
Rachel’s body was rather still by the time that Max finally pulled herself back up along with Rachel, and pulled her legs up behind her model’s. The blonde girl turned on her side while Max brought them close enough to spoon, and Rachel hummed softly in response. As soft and as gentle as Max always was, Rachel appreciated how firm her kisses were along her shoulder, her back, her neck whenever they finished or had an interlude during sex. It tickled like a massage and focused the sensation all over her body into little points.

A minute later, though, there was a knocking on Rachel’s dorm room door, and it was not timid, either. It came accompanied by a grating, irate voice, “Hey, Amber! We can hear you and your little girlfriend you know, and we are supposed to be living in dorms, not a brothel!”

Rachel rolled her eyes, but was never one to take shit like that: “Yeah, Chase? Well I’m not a whore, so I’m pretty fucking sure these are still dorms! We might be in for a renovation if you keep drooling over Jefferson’s  _dick_ , though.”

“Oh what-the-fuck-ever, just shut it, won’t you?” There was a little more huff, but soon the cashmere-wearing growler returned to her side of the dorm, where there was perfectly no reasonable chance that she could hear these two.

“Hmph. She just wishes she had her own photographer - or model. Either one’d help her career, or help her with Jefferson. Pretty sure you and I, though, we’ve got him in the bag.” She snuggled back against Max as well as she could, but Max wasn’t kissing anymore - her fingers just drifted lazily over Rachel’s skin, which was rapidly growing colder, so she pulled her comforter over the two of them.  
There was quite a pause before Max said something in response, not that Rachel had expected her to, but then she practically whispered, “I’m not just your photographer, right?”

Rachel rolled around, careful to make sure she didn’t pull up the sheets and allow heat to escape. She gave Max a long look, and the two of them were so close that Max could not effectively divert her gaze. So she just stared at Rachel’s forehead all the while.  
Finally, Rachel let a pointedly incredulous dawn over her face. “No, sweetie. I love you. I was just talking about Victoria, not us . . . don’t worry. You’re mine, and I’m yours, okay?”

Max nodded, burying herself against Rachel’s chest. “Okay.”


	21. Goodbye to Everything that I Knew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max mourns Chloe's loss on Wednesday of the sacChloe ending, immediately following the snapshot in which she is laying out all of Chloe's photographs. She receives a visit from Victoria, who is looking for a way to make things right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- SacChloe  
> \- Chasefield... ish?  
> \- Max is currently the-max-left-behind, and therefore does not recall her time travel capabilities, but simply came to after Chloe was shot.

**Words:** ~ 2,000  
**Tags:** Chasefield, Angst, Life is Strange

 **Summary:** I explore the snapshot of a moment in which Max studies the photographs of Chloe in the sacChloe ending further, including a visit from Victoria.

 **Music:**  [“Goodbye to You”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz9mThRbBrI)

 

* * *

 

 

They surrounded Max like the toys of a frantic child. The photographs, all blue and yellow, were laid out as carefully as she could manage, but still her rug was covered of them. Five years. She’d missed five years. It was a good thing that Rachel had been a photographer, too.

Max opened up the second box of photos, and quickly recognized the one on top. Her breath caught as she remembered the day - Chloe with her arm around Max, on the day that William died. It must have been the last of the polaroids - those were always William’s thing, and it looked like Rachel had been digital.  
As she lifted the photo to inspect it more closely, she traced a finger down along the side of it, as if tempting a paper cut. But no pain, no pain from the paper at least. God, Joyce. She’d had her whole family torn away, except for Chloe’s step-dad. This wasn’t fair to her. Her husband, her daughter.

It finally felt like she might cry. But there was a knock on the door.

At first, Max was quiet, not sure how to respond. Nobody had wanted to disturb her, probably because they had no clue what to say, if they even knew that Max had been involved.

“Max? . . . Max, can I come in?”  
Shit, Victoria. She’d never knocked before. And Max couldn’t exactly deal with her right now. But at the same time, she didn’t sound hostile.

“Yeah.” Max was surprised to find her throat a lot more fucked up than her eyes - but Victoria seemed to hear her nonetheless, because the door opened.  
“Oh,” the blonde gasped almost immediately, seeing the dozens of photographs scattered in a huge arc around Max, leaving her with only a few feet of space in the entrance. She looked hardly any different - she was just as made up and dressed up as usual, but Max could see the redness of her eyes, and remembered why she was sitting here in the first place. “Is this her?” Victoria asked, gingerly stepping inside Max’s unfamiliar room.

Max just gave a nod, and looked back at the photograph in her hand briefly before setting it aside like the others, not wanting to prompt Victoria to ask about it in particular.  
“I heard you two were friends. Like, best friends.”

Max nodded again, and her eyes back down towards the pool of photos, more to avoid looking at Victoria than to see them. Victoria closed the door behind her and sat down on her knees, laying her hands in her lap and looking around Max’s room a little - at the photo wall in particular, but just trying to get her bearings, and avoid looking at the photos of the girl that Nathan had killed.  
“What was her name?”

“Chloe. Chloe Elizabeth Price.” The brunette swallowed, biting back the fresh feelings, and tried to focus on the person here. People keep you out of your feelings. “What do you want, Victoria?”

That seemed to almost puzzle her, even though she knew her exact answer. She’d rehearsed it. She’d never have come without a reason. It was just hard to say. Saying it, talking about it, made it all more true. “I’m like . . . the closest thing Nathan had to family, a real family, ever since his sister left. I feel responsible for him, and of course for the way I’ve treated you. I wanted to be able to say I was sorry - sorry for what he did, and that I didn’t stop him. I should have known something was up with him a long time ago, but I was so busy protecting him that I-”

“Victoria.”

“Uh, yeah Max?”

Max’s eyes were still trained on all the photos that she’d missed. “I don’t blame you. You didn’t know he had a gun. You didn’t know that he’d kidnapped Chloe, or Kate, or anyone. And you weren’t there. You couldn’t have stopped him. But I was there, and I heard that he had a gun, but I just hid. I mean, I just sat there because I was scared - I didn’t even realize it was Chloe and I was scared and I didn’t do anything. Even when he shot her I just hid while she died and I let her die-” somewhere in there, Max and Victoria couldn’t keep avoiding each other’s eyes, and as Max’s finally cracked in pain and she finally, finally began to cry, the change felt like a stab in Victoria’s gut, or her heart.  
She stood and tiptoed as carefully as she could to avoid the photos until she crouched by Max’s side. 

“Max, Max, you could have been killed. I know what he’s like at his worst . . . or when he’s on something, at least. You didn’t know he’d use it. I don’t think he knew he’d use it. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.” Those words were so familiar to her, and it felt both familiar and horribly wrong as her arms wrapped around Max’s shoulders, but, surprisingly, Max did not pull away.  
“But - she didn’t even know I was there! I hadn’t seen her in five years and I only saw her die. I never got to explain anything. And Nathan, they think he killed her girlfriend, too, Rachel. She was so alone.” Max’s hand clung to the back of Victoria’s arm like she’d grip her bag.

“I . . . I’m so sorry, Max. I’m so sorry.”  
So, it had been Nathan, not Jefferson. Victoria hadn’t known that. Her friend hadn’t been all right for a long time. She just hadn’t realized to what degree. But with Max falling apart into her shoulder, one thing, at least, felt normal. Victoria felt like she had someone to take care of.  
“They’re going to put him away, Max. Both of them, Jefferson and Nathan. There’s no way they’re walking away after what happened. Nathan’s . . . gone.”

Max knew she was trying to be comforting, by adding some degree of justice to the situation. But Max was not a foolish girl, even when she was scared and in pain. She could hear what ‘gone’ meant to Victoria. And for some reason, it was _that_ that was comforting, or that at least helped her calm her breathing.  
“He was like . . . your family,” Max uttered.

Victoria’s voice trembled a little on the simple note, “Yeah.”

Max let her grip on Victoria’s arm abate, and peeled it slowly away from her body until Victoria dropped her arms. Max turned and scooted away from Victoria, leaning her back against the frame of her bed. Victoria turned and sat against Max’s couch - Max with her legs out in front of her, Victoria still on her knees, proper beyond the last straw.  
“I’m sorry, Victoria. I’m sorry for you. You don’t deserve to lose your best friend, either. But I . . . I want those fuckers to pay for what they did. Not just to Chloe, but to Kate, and to Rachel, and everyone else they hurt. Nathan, or Jefferson - they might get out one day, but Chloe’s never getting out once we put her in the ground.”

Max had never looked Victoria in the eye like this, but it was almost exactly what Victoria had come looking for - the anger and indignation that she knew they deserved, that she wanted to eat up for her guilt. “I know,” Victoria replied. “But they won’t ever hurt someone again. Not even the Prescotts have that much money.”

Max just nodded again, looking at her feet. “Good.” And the word hung there, still.

Victoria took to looking at the pictures, trying to let the tension abate without just leaving; she leaned over them from her seat without touching any, not wanting to disturb them, recognizing when a space was sacred. “She was . . . beautiful,” Victoria said, not knowing what else she could deduce respectively from any of the recent photos.

Max nodded again, reaching up to swipe some of the hair away from her forehead. She pulled her knees a bit closer to her chest, looking over the photos again without really seeing any. “Yeah, she was. She was . . . my first crush. She got so punk while I was away - but, I mean, she always loved sci-fi, so it was only a matter of time.”  
Victoria gave a bit of an appreciative huff, but just kept looking.

Max had been having so many thoughts, looking through the photos; “She and Rachel . . . they must have been something. Chloe loved . . . science - I mean, like. all of it, but engineering and astronomy. And I heard that Rachel was a model, and she was studying for a legal degree at the community college her senior year. They must have been an amazing couple.”

That prompted a long sigh from Victoria, as she noticed a few of the two together - frequently, frequently together, but never quite couple-y. “I never met Chloe, I don’t think. But Rachel, she partied with the Vortex Club - and it looks like they both hung with the skaters, but I don’t think I ever saw them together.”

“Huh . . . the way her mom talked, it sounded like they were inseparable. Chloe - she really took a hit when Rachel disappeared.” Max pulled another photo from the photo box - one of Chloe performing an ollie while her hair was still long and blonde, probably when she was just picking up skating.

“I . . . her funeral - it’s Friday, right? Rachel’s family, they haven’t put out an obituary yet. I guess, even with how long she was gone, they didn’t believe she could be dead.”

Another nod from Max. If only she knew how to communicate more nonverbally. “Yeah, Friday at five, at the cemetery close to the light house. She and I used to have a, a ‘pirate fort’ near there, and her mom thought she might. Like it.”

Victoria watched the tension in her neck change as the mixture of nostalgia and grief struck Max, but she welled up the resolve to finish her question: “Can I come with you? To pay my respects to her family. I don’t need to tell them about me and Nathan but I just want to . . . see.”

That made only the vaguest, strangest sense to Max. But she didn’t want to feel any more alone than she already did. “Okay, Victoria.”

“Okay, Max.”

The blonde leaned forward on her knees and dragged herself a bit forward, and pulled Max into another hug, but this time Max was capable of reciprocating it, holding her much more tightly than she thought any hug with Victoria would ever be. 


	22. Operation: Friendship Blitzkrieg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate Marsh has unveiled the secret identity of a witch who saved the magical quartet from harm last night: none other than Victoria Chase! And she proposes a plan: befriend her, add her to the coven, and in so doing make a powerful ally (and remove a powerful rival).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by Yuki Yuna is a Hero. Intended as a preview of a magical girl witch AU from Taylor's perspective that I desperately want to write someday.

Kate coughed, drawing everyone’s attention to the front of the room. As the dorm common rooms had originally been study halls, a white board replaced the front wall with a chalk board at the back. In thick black dry-erase marker read:

## Operation Friendship Blitzkrieg

Kate held the marker behind her, clasping her wrist behind her back and standing at attention. 

“Thank you all for joining me today,” she said, as if they hadn’t been hanging out together every day for the past two weeks. She kept her chin tilted up just a little, not quite making eye contact with anyone, which suited Max just fine. “As you are all aware, last night we made contact with a chaos demon. Unfamiliar with its capabilities, several members of our coven were disabled - “ she gave a pointed glance at Rachel and Max, who smiled sheepishly “- before we were, shall I say, rescued by an unfamiliar witch. What you do not know, however, is the identity of our rescuer.”

Kate closed her eyes, cleared her throat, and continued, “However, last night I also discovered their identity.”

Max’s eyes just went wide with surprise; Chloe asked, “Wait, what?”; Rachel grinned leaning forward in her seat as she said, “Way to go Katie!”

However, they were all slightly taken aback as Kate slowly exhaled, eyes still closed. After a few more seconds, the sigh dragged on long enough to make them nervous.

“Uh, who is it?” Chloe asked.

Finally, Kate breathed in, opened her eyes, and replied, “Our savior last night was Victoria Chase.”

While Chloe and Max remained stunned, Rachel replied, “No fuckin’ way.”

Missing the point, Kate pointed at Rachel and said, “Yes, _that_ Victoria Chase.”

Rachel blinked.  
“No, Kate, I got it, I just mean -”

“Oh”

“- that, like. That’s not great.”

Chloe’s eyes flitted over to Rachel before finally turning away from Kate entirely to face her. “So like, what’s the big? Now there’s just some random witch bitch around - why do we care?”

“Look at the board,” Max replied.

Chloe did. She read it. Then she read it again.  
“Oh shit,” she said, dropping her forehead into her palm fast enough that it made a slapping noise. “Are we seriously going to try and add her to the coven?”

Kate’s hands dropped to her hips, her face a (very, very soft) scowl. “Of course we are. You know we’re stronger with every member, and Victoria seems very powerful for a lone witch. Why _not_ team up?”

Chloe shrugged; “Did I not already cover the ‘bitch’ part?”

Rachel loudly sighed, though, dragging the conversation away from Chloe’s grasp. “Sadly, I think Kate is probably right. We might be dead right now if it weren’t for her, and the demons have only been ramping up lately. We don’t just need fresh blood. We need someone trained. Clearly, Tori is.”

“Max?” Kate asked, turning her attention to the girl behind Chloe. “What do you think?”

Everyone looked to her, and her eyes snapped up to Kate’s. She started to futz with her woven leather wristband.  
“I . . . uh. I’m still in the shock over Victoria being a witch. But making friends sounds nice.”

“Great,” Kate said, “now that we’re all in agreement-”

“But I didn’t agree,” Chloe interjected

“- let’s move on to the plan, shall we?”

* * *

 

The crew leaned around the corner of the boys’ dorm, spotting their target. Victoria stood by the “Rachel owes me money” tree, her eyes turned down to her phone. She must have been waiting for Taylor and Courtney. Taylor was constantly tardy for things, but Courtney could be here any second. They’d have to be quick.

“All right, I’m up,” Max said, stepping forward and cracking her knuckles.

“You can do it,” Kate whispered at a volume that nullified the usefulness of whispering.  
“Try not to die,” Chloe said.  
Rachel just gave her a thumbs-up.

“Whew, okay, okay. Yeah. I’m great at making friends,” Max told herself, then began to walk, awkwardly and stiffly, across the courtyard.  
In her attempt to make a beeline for Vic, though, her foot caught on one of the tiny ‘fence’ strings, and she ended up hopping her way only a few feet from Victoria. Her attempts to recover were many, but they weren’t very effective.

She face-planted into the grass a few feet from Victoria.  
Victoria didn’t even look up.

“Heh, heh,” Max laughed, picking herself up off the ground and wiping away the dirt as if nothing had happened. Her chuckles managed to make herself feel creepy before Victoria had even laid eyes on her. She planted her feet back down and pivoted to make it clear she was trying to make contact, that her mistake at least had the purpose of trying to talk.

 _Nada._ Victoria just kept scrolling on her phone as if Max wasn’t even there.

Max opened her mouth to speak, but realized she hadn’t actually planned this far. _Crap!_ She usually only bothered to shoot back retorts with Victoria in class. It was sort of a next-level step to invite her into the coven. Or say hello without thick sarcasm.  
 _Come on, Max! You’re friendly! Say something! Like, what would you say if you just ran into her in an MMO?_

Max’s mouth was still hanging open, but she managed a bit of a dry swallow, and then a quiet, “Kek?”

This time, Victoria looked up, and Max froze.

“Did you say something, Caulfield?”

_Oh my fucking god you idiot! What are you going to say now?!_

“Um.”

_Just say something! Say ‘hello, so nice to see you outside of class Victoria, love the cashmere today - oh, and thank you for saving me from that Chaos demon yesterday, it smelled like rotting flesh and it was awful and-’_

Wide-eyed Max just booked it for the girl’s dorm without saying another word.

* * *

 

“Seriously, don’t worry about it, Max, I’ve got it.”

It was back to corner-leaning, but this time they were both more and less conspicuous. More because everyone could see them doing it, less because it was between third and fourth periods in the hallway and people were too busy to really care. Victoria stood at her locker, switching books between it and her bag, with her headphones on, bobbing a little to whatever song they couldn’t hear.

It was Chloe’s turn, and despite the fact that they’d agreed that they should “plan better,” this had only prompted Chloe to say, “I have a plan,” and not share it with anyone. Anyway, she’d seemed pretty confident, so here they were.

Chloe took a deep breath.  
“Alright, Lieutenant Price, reporting for duty.”

She marched off, weaving as well as she could with her tall frame around the other students, which at a certain point should just be called ‘shoving’. Rachel gripped the hall corner tightly as she leaned over it, and Max held tightly to her shoulders, as if she, not the wall, could save her from the impending disaster.

Chloe hesitated briefly behind Victoria, then tapped her on the shoulder.  
Victoria looked over her shoulder.  
She smirked?, and placed the flap over her bag before tugging out her earphones.  
She said something, then Chloe said something.  
Victoria looked intrigued, leaning back against her locker and nodding.  
Chloe continued for a little bit, and then Victoria laughed. It was loud enough that they could hear it from here, even considering the din.

She really did have a witch’s laugh.

They kept chatting for about another minute, and then Victoria said something that left Chloe rather taken aback.  
Victoria didn’t really seem to notice, though, and gave Chloe a very obvious once-over before standing, leaning forward, and saying something quietly.

“Whoah, is she _in_?” Kate gasped.

Chloe’s stunned expression didn’t drop, but she pulled out her phone, nodding occasionally while Victoria recounted something.  
Then, she walked off into the photography room.

Half a minute later, and Chloe wandered back to her cluster of friends with her phone still in hand. They spread out from the corner, instead forming a semi-circle near one of Dana’s hand-crafted posters for a Vortex Club function.

Rachel started, “So, like, is she going to talk to us? Is it a maybe at least?”

Chloe finally seemed to snap back into reality, shaking her head rapidly to clear her thoughts. She shoved her phone into her pocket then raised her hand to ruffle her own hair. “I, uh . . . I didn’t really get to talk to her about the witch thing.”

Blank glances all around.  
And then Max’s, “But, wait, what did you guys talk about then?”

Chloe shrugged broadly, “Well, I mean, I tried but then things kinda just . . .” Chloe trailed off, not quite making eye contact with any of them.

Kate’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, leaning forward so that Chloe’s attention suddenly fell on her. She was . . . blushing?  
“Just _what_?” Kate asked.

“I . . . I think I just became Chase’s booty call? I mean, I’m not sure but? she said she could find a better use for my mouth than talking so much and she had plans for my body and like, like, we’re definitely gonna fuck.”

Max cried, “Chloe, what?”  
Rachel said, “Wait, seriously?”  
Kate said, “But don’t you hate her?”

Chloe only really seemed to hear Kate’s final remark and replied, “I mean, yeah, but have you seen her?”

They all groaned, but Chloe just snickered.

* * *

 

Kate, Max, and Chloe sat in Max’s room during Rachel’s attempt. It was kind of weird to have them all in her room without the cauldron and everything set up, and her eyes darted around as if she’d find something new and interesting to direct their attention to while they waited.

This just resulted in silence. Chloe sat on her phone, while Kate made much the same glances that Max was. Rachel’s knocking out in the hallway had yet to produce any results.

“Huh, this is weird,” Chloe said without looking up from the screen. Max and Kate both focused on her, waiting for a follow-up.  
“Texting Victoria’s phone has just been getting me these weird, automated messages saying she can’t receive texts.”

“That. Um. That doesn’t seem correct.” Max tilted her head as she tried to recall Victoria’s phone model. “I’m pretty sure she’s just got like, a Galaxy?”

The door out in the hallway opened, and they all quieted to hear through the door.

“Hey Victoria, I was just-”

“Nope.”

Kate winced as the door slammed shut.

A few seconds later, Rachel shuffled in to greet their dour faces.

“I guess she still hates your guts,” Chloe offered, returning to her phone after a beat.

Rachel shrugged and plopped down on Max’s bed, and she and Max both scooted further back to the wall for comfort.

Kate sighed, and it trailed on long enough to make Max look over in concern.  
“I’m sorry guys. My plan sucked. I have no idea how to make Victoria join our coven when none of us are friends with her, and I have less of an idea how to make friends with her.”

Rachel said, “No, Kate, hunny, your plan was great!”  
Max said, “Aww, c’mon Kate, we’ll figure it out.”  
Chloe said, “I mean, it was kind of a bad idea.”

Everyone’s heads turned to Chloe.

 _Did she just fucking call Kate_ out _? I raised her better than this . . ._

Rachel replied, “Chloe, what the fuck-”  
Chloe threw her hands up in the air and said, “I mean, it involved being nice to Victoria! That’s bound to get your ass bit.”

She blinked.

“Speaking of which, I’m going to just try calling her.”

Max raised her hand up against her wall, brushing her photo wall along the way.   
“Um. I vote no?”

Chloe’s finger descended on her phone screen; “Yoooollloooo,” she insisted over everyone’s protests, and held the phone up to her ear.

Her face pinched in confusion after a few seconds.

“What the fuck?” she asked, looking around at everyone as if they could explain. When she only got shrugs, though, she turned the call on speakerphone.

 __[“Dude, dude, they did it, they found our easter egg.”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3Awb1T22Mk)  
“Who are you?”  
“It’s me? David Jaffe - I directed the game?”  
“What game?”  
“Your game. God of War?”  
“Go away or I’ll-”  
“Dude, dude...”

“Okay, I think that’s enough of that,” Rachel interjected, and Chloe quickly clicked end.

“Whaaaaat just happened?” Chloe asked.

Rachel shrugged, but replied, “I think you did in fact just get fucked by Victoria Chase.”

* * *

 

It was the sudden death round. None of us had wanted to make Kate go alone to try, especially once she started feeling so down on her plan. We gave up for the night and disbanded, but met up again real early so we could be outside before Victoria and her cronies. Once again she stood reading something on her phone next to the ‘Rachel Owes Me Money’ tree while waiting for the others. And once again they were hiding around the corner of the boys’ dorm to spy on her.  
The difference this time is that they were all trying to work up the courage to approach her. That should make it easier, but every time someone nearly worked up the nerve, they were out of sync, and fell back to the safe corner.

“Okay everyone, come on. Deep breaths. We can do this.”

Rachel didn’t sound that sure. She sounded much closer to how they all felt. But at least it was enough to get them to start their march down the walkway towards her. The path was a little too narrow for them to all walk abreast, but Max didn’t want to fall out of step, so she scooted further to the left of the path. Unfortunately, this led to her foot catching on one of the low wires of the grass, and suddenly skipping past everyone as she regained her balance.

This time, at least, it seemed to catch Victoria’s attention. She looked up at Max, and then the whole pack of teenage girls took her notice.

“Oh hey,” she said, “what do you sluts want?”  
Although this particular title was usually saved for Rachel, Victoria’s eyes lingered on Chloe this time. She quirked an eyebrow for the question, but it only prompted a growl from her - and for her to stuff her hands in her pockets with no more response.

Kate raised her hands up in surrender. “We didn’t come to fight, Victoria.”

She remained unconvinced. “Oh? But you brought all four of you.”

Max nodded. “We did. But that’s because . . . because . . .”   
She looked to the others for confirmation, and everyone gave her a nod.  
She turned back to Victoria; “Because we want to ask you to join our coven.”

She scoffed. They figured she would do that. She placed one hand on her hip, her knuckles on the other hip (her hand was still a little busy with the phone). They’d figured she’d do that, too.  
“And why would I want to do that? I saw you guys Tuesday. You’re a mess. Why would I want to join your coven?”

“Wait,” Chloe said, still with the big pouty face. “You knew it was us?”

Victoria shrugged. “Yeah? Your outfits don’t exactly hide your identities, dumbass. Try wearing a mask or, like, putting in some effort. That goes for in general, too.” She smiled oh-so sweetly, and it was obvious as Chloe’s hands balled into fists in her pockets.

Rachel held up a hand to interject, hopefully dissuading Chloe from knocking Victoria’s teeth in.  
“Look, Vic, just stop being a bitch for five seconds. We could be a lot stronger with you in our coven, and you could be a lot stronger for having a coven. Look at what you managed by yourself - imagine what you could do with the Right at your fingertips?”

The girls’ dorm opened loudly while Victoria slowly leaned back against the tree, her self-satisfied smile giving way to a look of confusion. Max took a peak around the tree and found Taylor and Courtney approaching quickly - they’d have to wrap this up quickly.

“So, wait, let me get this straight. You’re offering because you think I don’t have a coven?”

The implication of the question was as obvious as the possibility it led to, and yet they all stood stunned as they heard it.

“Are you saying there are _more_ witches at this school than just us five?” Kate asked.

And the smirk was back on Victoria’s face. Her eyes darted one way, then the other as Taylor and Courtney flanked her on either side of the tree, dousing them all in the same contemptuous looks from their endless soup kitchen line of contemptuous looks.

Finally, her eyes locked back on Kate.  
“Oh, there’s a few.”

And then, with a snicker, Victoria kicked off from the tree, and she and her posse walked on by, Courtney just managing to clip Max on the shoulder as she passed.

A few seconds later, and the departing trio was laugh, though Taylor’s could really be called more of a cackle.

Rachel watched them all go through a slitted glare. When she spoke, it was so severe that it could only be called a curse.  
“Those _witches_.”


	23. Chasefield: I'm Just a Little Bit Into You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt:** As Max is snooping through Victoria's room, she finds her diary, and can't help herself. She's found out what Victoria really thinks of her and boy, did she not see that coming. Or hear Victoria coming down the hall, for that matter....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A new universe for me!
> 
> \- Max is uncontrollably gay and much less of a nervous wreck  
> \- Rachel is alive and things are basically just kind of OK.
> 
> Credit to my partner Minal for helping me with a lot of the dialogue. A Lot.

 

Maybe we should just say that Max has boundary issues. Or maybe we should condemn her for snooping around Victoria’s room while she’s out with friends. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter what we do, because Max Caulfield’s self control was already expended today listening to Warren talk about Quentin Tarantino films, and now she just wants to indulge herself in Victoria’s secrets.

At first when she finds Victoria’s laptop unlocked, all she can do is grin at her near-infinite power. She could make embarrassing statuses. She could post selfies. She could  _delete_  selfies. She could go an individually heart every single one of Rachel’s photos (again, but as Victoria this time). She could ride the high of exposing Victoria’s world and then things would just go back to normal, but with nothing to fear from Victoria ever again.

Suffice it to say, Max has some things to work out in therapy, but not until she gets caught.

Oh? Max spots a delightful prize behind the roll-out keyboard - a little black book. She recognizes it immediately, of course, as the notebook Victoria constantly makes notes in while maintaining eye contact (it’s a total power move, and, if Max is being honest with us, it’s kind of hot). Now this is a profound level of intrusion for her.   
It’s perfect!

At first she just leafs through the pages with only a briefest glance at them (Victoria doesn’t draw anything in them - boo!), but then she catches her name. She flips back a page and begins to read, sitting with her feet up on the desk and swishing about in contentment.

* * *

 

> **Max**
> 
> Maxine Caulfield is the last member of the little R.A. gang and quite possibly the worst of them. Oh, she’s quiet and shy unlike the others, and she doesn’t try to show off, but still. Beneath it all, diary, I can see what she really is.
> 
> Max Caulfield thinks she’s a god. She’s not like Rachel, thinking she can play the game and play it better  than everyone else - no, she won’t even afford you the dignity of a response, of undermining you, or of competing. She just sits there, blank faced, no matter what I throw at her. Today, in class, I fucking called her out for confusing Michelangelo and Raphael as the painter for the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and she said, “Oh yeah, sorry, that was an AU.” She has abso-fucking-lutely no shame.
> 
> And it’s not like it stops there! One time she walked in on me doing laundry (mom and dad weren’t home for the weekend and I didn’t feel like hanging out there alone), and I was wearing my rattiest fucking sweater and it was just gross. I was just going to be in and out and nobody would see, but, lo and behold, Max ALSO decides to do her laundry at 2am like some kind of asshole, and was like, “Love your sweater.” Like ???? She doesn’t compliment my regular clothes - she is either the most tasteless dumpster goblin on the planet or she was fucking with me. 
> 
> AND HAVE YOU SEEN HER BACKPACK? It’s got like 1,000 buttons on it, and unlike Kate or Evan who at least is trying to provoke a conversation about environmentalism or some shit, they’re literally. All. Fandom bullshit. I think the full cast of Ouran Highschool Host Club is on there. Worse than that, they’ve all got Pride flag backgrounds. Like 100 fucking pins - we get it you’re gay! No surprise thanks to the fact that she RADIATES FUCKING QUEERNESS AND WON’T STOP CALLING OUT “LMAO, GAY!” EVERY TIME A VILLAIN IS REVEALED ON SAILOR MOON. For reference: Taylor started going over to Max’s room to watch Sailor Moon in preparation for Crystal coming out, and on Tuesdays and Thursday nights, there’s a solid two hours of ‘LMAO, GAY!” every twenty minutes. Then, hey, I thought - ‘you know what? Sailor Moon is a good show. I should watch it with Taylor instead and I won’t have to deal with this bullshit.’ Wrong! Through the goddamn walls Max just knows what’s happening despite the fact that it’s on subs and still calls ‘LMAO GAY’.
> 
> Worse? One time her and R.A. were looking up compatibility charts for their signs, and Max comes up to me in class and is just like, ‘Hey Victoria, what’s your sign?’ But when I tried to remind her that astrology is baseless and trivial, she just said, ‘Oh cool, you’re a Scorpio,’ and told me we must be compatible. Like no shit Sherlock. But it still doesn’t mean anything.
> 
> I guess that’s just it. She doesn’t want to be mean or cruel or even give a fuck that I’m there. I’m not quite invisible, sure, but what I have to say couldn’t be more inconsequential. Nothing fazes her. I’m not a threat. She just thinks I’m cute. The only thing is, I can’t tell if it’s in a ‘girl’ way or a ‘child’ way. I don’t know what she thinks of me at all, only that it’s not very much.
> 
> So why can’t I stop thinking about her?? What’s my fucking deal? She can’t even download digital photos because of that Polaroid of hers, so I just end up on Rachel’s Facebook all day (Max is always there, and it’s always going to get a billion likes Max wouldn’t have gotten if she’d put it up herself).
> 
> I hate this, diary. It fucking sucks. Why did I have to be put in class with a girl like Maxine Caulfield? She’s-

“What are you doing here, Max?” The voice is cold and threatening. Max’s paralysis is instantaneous, and all she manages to do is close the diary and sit back in the chair.

She can’t see Victoria, and this is the closest she can get to Victoria not seeing her.

“Totally - uh, y’know. Minding my own b-”

“You were reading my fucking diary.”

“- just wanted to drop in and say hi, y’know.”

“Drop the act, Caulfield. Why are you here?”

Max plants her feet in hopes that she won’t have to spin around and face Victoria. Unfortunately, literally any part of Victoria’s body is stronger than her whole body, and she spins nonetheless. 

Max is silent for a moment. Then she swipes under her nose, nodding gently as if this is a break in the conversation and not the start of an interrogation. When Victoria’s glare deepens, she only gives an awkward smile in response.

And then she fucking finger-guns.

First she throws her out, then Victoria slams the door behind her.

Max picks herself up, dusts herself off, and sits down criss-cross-apple-sauce in front of Victoria’s door.

> **Max:** it’s in the girl way.
> 
> **Victoria:**  what?
> 
> **Max:**  In your diary, you asked if I thought you were cute in a girl way or a kid way.  
>  **Max:** girl way
> 
> **Victoria:**  i do not care
> 
> **Max:**  suuuuuuuuuuuure  
>  **Max:** But, jsyk  
>  **Max:**  If you did care  
>  **Max:**  I would like that
> 
> **Victoria:**  What does that even mean?
> 
> **Max:**  Like I really like your TV  
>  **Max:**  we should watch something together sometime in your room alone   
>  **Max:**  with no one else around

> **Victoria:** Could you stop being gross?

> **Max:** Could you stop being hot?

Victoria’s door pulling open leads to Max falling back halfway onto Victoria’s shoes, halfway out in the hall.

Victoria huffs. The cold venom is gone and now all that’s left is frustration. “Why are you like this? Do you have to be so weird?”

Max shrugs, making no effort to get up. Victoria pulls her feet out from under her.

“I dunno, would you still like me if I was normal?”

Victoria is on the edge of yelling and she knows it. Unfortunately, she exerts all her self-control into not yelling instead of screening what she’s saying: “Maybe! But- fuck.”

Max grins. Victoria holds her head with a hand and exhales slowly, trying to calm down. Max pops up to her feet and leans against the frame of Victoria’s door.

Once she’s calmed down a little, Victoria holds her hands up in defeat. “Whatever. That’s not the point. The point is you’re an asshole and you shouldn’t have looked.”

“True,” Max concedes. “True, true, true. Never shall I ever do it again.” Max holds three fingers to the ceiling at a right angle. “Scout’s honor.”

Victoria glares again, but this one is fleeting. “Good. And you’re not going to say anything about what you read, right?”

Max nods. “Totally.” She futzes with her bracelets for a few seconds before adding, “Hey,  _Blue is the Warmest Color_  is in theaters. D’you wanna go?”

Victoria rolls her eyes, sitting in the rolling chair Max had been in a second ago. “Can you just stop, okay? Even if I have a crush, or whatever, it’s my own fucking business, okay? Just leave me alone.”

“Victoria, I’m asking you on a date.”

Whether Victoria’s flushed skin is from anger or embarrassment is unclear, but Max is satisfied either way.

“Why?” Victoria asks. “Why like this when it could have been literally any other way?”

Max takes a second to think that over. “Hmm. Well. I’m a fuck-up. I’m nosy. We both know you were never going to decide if you liked me or hated me and I . . . wanted to know.” She shrugs. “I guess I didn’t really make it any clearer.”

“No, you didn’t.” Victoria’s hands are crossed over her chest, and now she’s looking off into space just like Max is. Anything is easier than looking at each other.

The high has worn off, and now Max just feels like shit. Victoria liked her, and she was into Victoria, and that didn’t mean much now because she blew it and acted like a kid. She likes making fun of Victoria for not being open about her feelings (re: any of them), but here she was, stepping into the shit instead of sending a Risky Text or something like a normal person.

“Ah.” Max crosses her arm over her torso to hold her own shoulder. It gives her the comfort of being held. “Yeah I . . . ha. Yeah. I fucked up.” She nods to herself, melting in shame for a moment in Victoria’s doorway.

Victoria refuses to look at her.

“Yeah . . . I should go.”

No, it’s not over quite yet. She can’t leave things just like that. “Hey Victoria?”

“Hm?” Victoria offers her a side-eyed glance, but then it’s back to the wall. Max feels cold.

“Look . . . I’m. I’m sorry. That was fucked. I just . . . I know better, and being curious doesn’t make it okay. I’m sorry. I’ll leave you alone. Sorry.”

As she turns to leave, though, Victoria finally, actually looks at her. “Wait.”

Max pauses just outside the doorway, then just swings her body back in. “Yeah?”

“What time?”

“Huh?”

“What time do you want to go see  _Blue is the Warmest Color_?”

“I thought-”

“I’ll buy the tickets. You can buy the snacks. Deal?”

Max shifts her weight on her feet. “Um, yeah. Deal.”

“And next time you want to come over, just. Like. Text me.”

“Oh.” Max scratches the back of her head. “Really? Like, like friends? I’m so confused.”

Victoria rolls her eyes again. She stands up from her chair and closes the space between them quickly. It leaves Max feeling nervous, unsure where to look, how to stand, how to try and stop being a loser for five seconds and accept an invite to the movies. Which actually she did in the first place.

Victoria leans down a little, eyes narrow and suspicious as she asks, “So, are you into me or are you fucking with me?”

Max swallows. “Into you, definitely.” She gives a sheepish grin. Then a shitty joke crosses her mind about  _fucking with her later_ , but when she opens her mouth to say it, she at least manages the restraint to literally shut her trap.

Victoria raises her hands and shoves Max outside of her room (Max is bewildered by this point but also trying not to laugh at the sex joke). “Okay. Then take me on a good date, Caulfield, and we’ll call it even.”

And then she closes the door between them again. Shock is all she can feel for a second, but once it wears off, a goofy fucking grin crosses her face. She makes no move to leave the hallway between their rooms, just pulls out her phone.

> **Max:** so hey do you want to hang out tho?
> 
> **Victoria:**  -_-

There’s no follow-up at first. Then, it’s just the “...” for a minute, or some other wildly too-long time that Max can’t handle.

> **Victoria:** fine. But you absolutely cannot say ‘lmao gay’ to literally anything.
> 
> **Max:**  but what if we hold hands  
>  **Max:**  what am I supposed to do then?
> 
> **Victoria:**  we are so very much Not going to hold hands
> 
> **Max:**  okay, okay.  
>  **Max:**  At Blue is the Warmest Color maybe?

Victoria: just come in and shut up

Max’s grin won’t stop, but she slides her phone back and goes to join Victoria in her room. Maybe she’d be willing to watch  _Final Fantasy_...?


End file.
